By Kim Willsher
Publication Date: 2026-05-11 12:29:00
Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English; the last word in historical literature, drama, humor and satire.
Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century playwright has been revived after scientists at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to write an experimental play in his style.
L’Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer or False Omens), a three-act comedy, made its debut at the Royal Opera at the Palace of Versailles last week.
The two-hour play tells the story of a wealthy bourgeois Parisian who, under the instructions of a charlatan astrologer named Pseudoramus, insists that his daughter Lucile marry an indebted and elderly wigmaker.
While the theme may well have been imagined by Molière, the dialogue, music, costumes and set design were all created using a French AI tool called Le Chat (The Cat).
A group of researchers at the Sorbonne worked on the project called Molière Ex Machina for two and a half years.
