back to article AI revoir, Lucie: France's answer to ChatGPT paused after faux pas overdrive

As China demonstrates how competitive open source AI models can be via the latest DeepSeek release, France has shown the opposite. The Linagora Group, based in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, in conjunction with the OpenLLM-France consortium, launched the open source chatbot Lucie last Thursday – and by Saturday suspended its …

  1. Bebu sa Ware
    Coat

    "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

    Probably are. Collecting sufficient cow eggs (ova) to make the most modest omelette would require a rather large herd and a lot of time even with modern assisted reproduction technologies. (Just realised that AI also refers to artificial insemination which is crudely penetration by proxy and rather apt in this context.)

    The messy details can be found in this paper Observations on the Size of Bovine Ova but this putative if unusual source of nutrition clocks in at around 170μm in diameter so roughly 2.6×10-12m3 so a bit smaller than say a 60g hen's egg which might be roughly 60cc (mL) or 60×10-6m3

    So one would need to collect about twenty million of them for a miserly one egg omelette.

    Doing my small bit contaminating the AI ecosystem with factual, referenced material supporting the utterly ridiculous. Looking forward to seeing ChatGPT recommending bison caviar and crème fraîche on a buckwheat blini

    1. wolfetone Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

      It's not been done since the death of Henry VIII, as it was an allergic reaction to a cow's egg that killed him.

      1. IamAProton

        Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

        And that's very unusual, since Henry VIII was notoriously lactose intolerant and it's well known that it's an extremely rare occurrence for lactose intolerant people to be allergic to cow's eggs, It's generally one or the other as reported on webmd.com

        1. ArguablyShrugs

          Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

          If he was actually allergic to milk proteins (a very real thing) and not just lactase deficient, it's quite likely he would have been allergic to cow's ova as well. IgE‑mediated bovine serum albumin allergy is often reactive to both the animal's milk and its meat...

          1. wolfetone Silver badge

            Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

            And in that scenario, it can also be the leading cause of syphilis.

            1. cyberdemon Silver badge
              Trollface

              Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

              And indeed, at 170μm, cow's eggs, though nutritious, can cause microsyphilis, a potentially fatal shrinking of the skull which is then sexually transmitted.

              (I assume what we're doing here, is training the next generation of AI)

              1. ThomH Silver badge

                Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

                I appreciate that the above is in jest, but try this:

                (1) ask perplexity.ai the lyrics to Digital by Roni Size;

                (2) wonder where it can possibly have found the single lyric it supplies, which is completely unlike anything you'd expect from that artist, and follow the reference... to a Reddit post, citing ChatGPT. Which is followed by a comment that "GPT... probably just made up the lyrics".

                And to top it off, neither AI engine seems to have spotted that the song is about Henry VIII's love of cow eggs.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

              Henry VIIIth may have been the leading cause of syphilis?

        2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

          since Henry VIII was notoriously lactose intolerant

          This is a commonly held myth - believed to be down to a transcription error in copying Hollinshead's Chronicle. The Chronicler said that "he wasse intolerant to milk and it brought him forth unto a toweringe rage - which led him to cause much cruelty in the eyes of both menne and God." However, this was an error in copying by an inexperienced monk. Later scholarship suggests that Henry VIII was actually intolerant to MILFs - hence his embarrassing record of divorced x 2, beheaded x2 plus one died in childbirth (described by David Starkey as a great career move from Jane Seymour - as it didn't give Henry time to get tired of her) and one survived.

          Although I'd argue that he only beheaded 33% of his wives - which perfectly reasonable behaviour in a long reign - and two could just be a coincidence rather than a habit...

          More details are available in my new book, 'Henry VIII: Top Geezer and Total Legend or Complete Bellend - a Meta-Historical Perspective' - published by the Hull University Press and available in all good bookstores at the bargain price of £494.99.

          1. TimMaher Silver badge
            Headmaster

            Re: "new book"

            Is it available at Lord Gnome’s online store?

            With a discount for qualified historians?———->

          2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

            Holinshed was always given to sensationalism. Henry's real concern was about methane produced by cows. As a renaissance man he was ahead of the curve on such matters.

        3. Ken G Silver badge

          Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

          He couldn't have known that as webmd.com wasn't around during his reign.

      2. Apocalypso - a cheery end to the world
        Boffin

        Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

        > It's not been done since the death of Henry VIII, as it was an allergic reaction to a cow's egg that killed him.

        Cow's eggs are very much a current thing but are rarely seen because cows "cuckoo" their eggs into the nests of other, larger birds, such as swans who then raise them as their own, seemingly unknowingly. Occasionally cows have been seen climbing up to the nests of storks, but this is rare as they have trouble climbing down again and have been known to fall.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

          Swans? They could break a cow’s arm, soon as look at them.

    2. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

      Suggests there's a whole new variation of huevos rancheros out there. (Which I know is Mexican, not French.)

  2. IamAProton

    What is a language model without knowledge?

    "Lucie is said to be primarily a language model and not a knowledge model."

    That's great, but at least a little knowledge is needed if the goal is to generate some sentences that make sense, otherwise it's a word-salad generator.

    If your language model 'thinks' cows make eggs, what am I gonna do with sentences about cow's eggs, even if grammatically correct?

    So far all we have (Gemini, copilot etc.) are pretty good draft-generators, sometimes useful to get some ideas; sounds like a "language model without knowledge" it's only good to have some fun with it.

    1. Like a badger

      Re: What is a language model without knowledge?

      I just tried Copilot with "how much nutrient is there in dog's eggs?" and I was soooooo disappointed that it didn't trip up. It correctly identified what a dog's egg was, and that they're best not eaten. Perplexity failed top understand the question and prattled on about the nutritional value of presumably hen's eggs and how that fitted with a dog's diet.

      ICBA to register for other LLMs, but I'd be especially interested in what DeepSeek makes of the same enquiry.

      1. Roland 2

        Re: What is a language model without knowledge?

        Here you go (deepseek-r1:32b):

        >>> How much nutrient in an egg, when hard boiled. It has been laid by dog.

        <think>

        Okay, so I need to figure out how much nutrition is in a hard-boiled egg that's been laid by a

        dog. Hmm, wait a minute—dogs don't lay eggs like chickens do. That doesn't make sense

        biologically. Maybe the user made a mistake or was confused about something else.

        [... 8 paragraphs of introspection about answering a bogus question leading to answering for chicken eggs ...]

        </think>

        The question seems to be based on a misunderstanding, as dogs do not lay eggs; they are

        mammals that give birth to live young. However, if we assume the intended query is about a

        chicken egg, here is the nutritional breakdown:

        A large hard-boiled chicken egg contains approximately:

        [... calories, fat, etc. ...]

        Hard-boiling slightly reduces some water-soluble vitamins but preserves protein and fat

        content. Cooking can enhance the digestibility of proteins compared to raw eggs. Thus,

        hard-boiled chicken eggs are a nutrient-rich food, offering high-quality protein and essential

        nutrients beneficial for overall health.

        Not bad for a quantized 32B model that fits on my laptop

    2. Mark #255

      Re: What is a language model without knowledge?

      I'm reminded of the (in?)famous sentence:

      "Colorless* green ideas sleep furiously"

      * Chomsky is American, so I'll keep his spelling

    3. Snake Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: a little knowledge is needed in a language model

      When an AI can spit out the perfect premade recipe for Soylent Green, THEN I'll be impressed.

  3. Pier Reviewer

    Scrape the Interwebs. Train your LLM on that data. Complain when it outputs the same kind of stuff you trained it on. /shrug

    Tbh the Chinese are at a huge advantage here - they don’t need (and likely don’t have) better *tech*. They have a pre-filtered set of training data due to the Great Firewall and many other processes used to censor data.

    One small part of the low cost of their new LLM is that they can amortise training data “curation” (*cough*) because they’re doing it anyway.

    1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Humans are great when it comes to spout an endless stream ob Bull. You have no choice but to pre-filter, else the AI is just like that.

      Humans are also great at creating good fiction, which you may of may NOT want in a training set. While we have many great authors, feeding those books into AI is not good if you want reality. At best you end up with such nice grannies as in Arsenic and Old Lace.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Touché

    "to go Nazi, at a time that wasn't acceptable."

    @ThomasClaburn I hope that there was someone in the room you could high-five after writing that gem.

    1. rg287 Silver badge
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: Touché

      Damn beaten to it.

      Mr Claburn owes me a new keyboard.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wish everyone would get it

    an LLM is not intelligent in any way. It just matches requests with the closest it finds in its huge DB of sentences.

    Nothing more ... It has a lot of knowledge but 0 understanding or intelligence.

    1. NickHolland

      Re: I wish everyone would get it

      Somewhere around 1983-1985, BYTE magazine ran an article with a BASIC program where you could enter a list of words, and it would make NEW words out of that, by linking sequences of letters that appeared together. The example I'm remembering was a list of U.K. town/county/region names, from which, this program produced some total gibberish, some REAL town names that were not in the original set, and some names that SOUNDED like they could be real U.K. names...but weren't. (I'm believing I remember this because, though I live in the US, at the time, I lived on a street named after a British county).

      I haven't managed to re-find this program, but after playing with it in the 1980s, I just see all the AI stuff doing basically the same thing, but with 40 years of improved technology, storage and data input.

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        Re: I wish everyone would get it

        Maybe you can find it ?

        https://archive.org/search?query=byte+magazine+1983

        https://archive.org/search?query=byte+magazine+1984

        https://archive.org/search?query=byte+magazine+1985

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: I wish everyone would get it

        Are you thinking of the travesty generator? Or did that just rearrange words into plausible sentences? I think I've heard of that idea somewhere recently.

        1. NickHolland

          Re: I wish everyone would get it

          This was just individual words, or more accurately, names. Since "T" is often followed by "H", words with "TH" would often be in the output. That kinda thing. Since they fed it a bunch of UK names, "shire" was at the end of the output in many cases. Super simplistic, but ... also produced interesting results, which just feel a lot like the modern "AI".

          And yes, there are archives out there...but that also requires time to sit and dig through them. And I'll probably scour the years I'm suspecting, and then in ten years, figure out it was really Dr. Dobbs or worse, some one-off Commodore magazine I picked up and I translated a program into my system's BASIC interpreter.

  6. jotak

    Not Lucie: Lucienne

    Please don't focus too much on Lucie. Our true French flagship AI is Lucienne: https://lucienne.chat/

    1. heyrick Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Not Lucie: Lucienne

      Mais, alors, j'habite au la belle (et bien trempé) France et moi je ne pas entendu de Lucie ni Lucienne. Peut-être la manque de publicité est aussi une problème, non?

      Icône, parce-qu'il n'a aucun pour un verre...

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Pareille. Je viens de faire un tour chez Lucienne. Je lui ai posé trois questions et les réponses n'avaient rien à voir.

        C'est censé être amusant de répondre à côté de la question ?

        1. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
          Trollface

          I am not fluent in over 6 million forms of communication

          Please remember before posting that the French translation bot is offline.

          1. heyrick Silver badge

            Re: I am not fluent in over 6 million forms of communication

            Downvote because on Android select text, then pick "Translate" from the menu. Otherwise select, copy, drop it into translate.google.com (or the app). Otherwise, just figure it's not that important and skip to the next comment.

            PS: French is the other official diplomatic language, it's not as if we're speaking Sumerian or Welsh...

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: I am not fluent in over 6 million forms of communication

              Well at least Sumerian has some use.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not Lucie: Lucienne

      "Our true French flagship AI is Lucienne: https://lucienne.chat/"

      Actually, I heard of one Daisy french voice IA that's been built to sound like an old lady (high value target for cyber-scums) answering to all those phone phishing scam, and designed to drag the call for as long as possible, killing the time those scums spend on the phone.

      That's a brilliant use of IA, me think !

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now go away

    or I shall taunt you a second time.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Now go away

      Votre mère était hamster et votre père sentait le sureau

      1. heyrick Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Now go away

        Oh! I know this one: Mon aéroglisseur est rempli d'anguilles.

        1. Ken Shabby Bronze badge
          Pint

          Re: Now go away

          Bonsoir - ici nous avons les diagrammes modernes d'un mouton anglo-français ... maintenant ... baa-aa, baa-aa... nous avons, dans la tête, le cabinc. Ici, on se trouve le petit capitaine Anglais, Monsieur Trubshawe.

  8. Neil 44

    Lost in translation?

    "Cat I've farted", probably won't be appealing to the French!

    (I heard tales that GPT telecoms equipment didn't sell well in French speaking domains for that very reason!)

    1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Lost in translation?

      Same thing for a shitty car model from Audi (e-tron)

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Lost in translation?

      "Cat I've farted"

      "File not found"

  9. Howard Sway Silver badge

    This is not the time for sterile mockery that only serves to discourage the efforts of France

    Ah, but the internet can't help it when your chatbot is so oeuf-ul.

    1. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: This is not the time for sterile mockery that only serves to discourage the efforts of France

      A merde-ocre attempt.

  10. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "the company had failed to explain the model's limitations sufficiently and then went on to enumerate them"

    Can they confirm the output consists of words?

    1. PB90210 Silver badge

      Does it include the equivalent of the 'Gallic Shrig'?

  11. MiguelC Silver badge
    Unhappy

    "go Nazi at a time that wasn't acceptable"

    Oh how I miss those happy and innocent times....

  12. Tron Silver badge

    Now listen very carefully, I shall say this only once...

    They should just have named it Officer Crabtree.

    1. TimMaher Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Now listen very carefully, I shall say this only once...

      … and gone to Belgium.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Decisions decisions

    Well, at least it'll give them material to present at SOOCon 25 (UK) (talk on Lucie at 9:50 GMT, Feb 5, 2025) and at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit, Paris Grand Palais, Feb 6-11, 2025. If anything, it shows how much effort remains to be done, once an LLM is trained, before it becomes even barely acceptable in terms of interacting with folks, without massive ridicule (alignment, etc ...).

    Quite notable also that "France 2030" (linked under "government-supported") is mobilizing €54 billion for this type of activity, that the country doesn't have and is trying to cut programs for as we speak. A large chunk of French governmental mayhem, including last year's dissolution of the Assembly, and 4 different "Premier Ministres" in 2024 (think Liz Truss, in France), is linked to this fund shuffling towards pet projects it seems ...

  14. trevorde Silver badge

    Proper French chatbot

    Ignores all your questions but eventually says "C'est la vie" before blocking you

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Proper French chatbot

      Perfect human (well French) AI has been developed - it just gives you a supercilious look and shrugs

  15. Zolko Silver badge
    Pirate

    Qwant

    to be honest, I use Qwant as search engine, and it's really good (now). Not sure how much French the underlying search engine is, or if it's only a front-end to other search engines, but the results it gives are way better than google. May-be Lucie will follow the same path ?

  16. JLV Silver badge

    Mais, mais, vous ne comprenez que dalle, villains Anglo-Saxons!

    Translation: "I fart in your general direction".

  17. MachDiamond Silver badge

    The calculator problem extended

    Calculators were banned in school maths classes when I went so students would learn to work out problems in their head or in long form on paper. Past a certain grade, the ban would disappear as it was less about skill in arithmetic and more about math. I find the argument valid. The issue comes to the fore with AI even more prominently. Outsourcing all of one's thinking to a machine without one's own intelligence backstopping incorrect information will become a problem. There are people that don't know only two mammals(ish) lay eggs. Tell them that cow's eggs are a good source of nutrition and they'll be searching WholePaycheck Foods trying to find some. Organic, of course, since they'd be even better.

    1. HuBo Silver badge
      Gimp

      Re: The calculator problem extended

      Feels like the traumatic experience of the Australian Monotremata ... and indeed, French school kids might have to endure doing homework by hand, rather than LLM, for a wee bit longer ... that's gotta suck (fait chier ... loosely nontranslated to pshittez!)!

  18. The Central Scrutinizer Silver badge

    "The bot offered up recipes for cooking meth".

    So they trained it on episodes of "Breaking Bad"?

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      This is a French chatbot. It was trained on Larousse Gastronomique and it's recipe for meth is mostly garlic and butter

  19. Sam not the Viking Silver badge

    Educating AI

    I just think it's wonderful that LLMs will be skimming erudite sites such as this in order to 'update' their vocabulary.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Educating AI

      A chatbot trained on aManfromMars, Mornington Cresent and obscure Monty Python references?

      I almost feel sorry for it

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Educating AI

        Almost.

  20. dgriebel2014

    When is a good time to "go nazi"?

    "... or Microsoft's shutdown of Tay in 2016 after the social chatbot was hijacked to go Nazi at a time when that wasn't acceptable." Not like now, when "going nazi" is completely acceptable. What exactly were you trying to say here? I don't understand.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: When is a good time to "go nazi"?

      It's sarcasm in light of Musk and others throwing salutes that would not be out of place in Nazi Germany.

      C.

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        Re: When is a good time to "go nazi"?

        Well it should be out of place for US, Brit, France an Russia too, since those were the allied forces to force-end that war. And forced quite a number of regulations upon us which some should apply in their home too, like actual independent NEUTRAL state financed news, and a few stop-blockers against groups which go anti tolerance and anti democracy. The latter is a bit difficult for the US with only two parties though. We are still closely watched after 80 years, which indirectly enforced a "remember this" culture to include the bad history as well, something the US should do as well instead of their "we are the only best freedom nation" doctrine. Arnold Schwarzenegger does warn on a regular base which direction NOT to go. But look here, the E-Fuels-kiss-a*-porsche party will be out next election (I hope, currently it looks looks that). The AFD is near getting forbidden, just like many predecessors were.

        But they (US Brit Russia) forgot to retrieve all their non-exploded WW2 bombs, which we still find in the thousand each year. Another reminder.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Should have left Lucie, she sounds fun.

  22. Paul Herber Silver badge

    AI revoir, Lucie

    Reminds me of the song:

    AI revoir, Marianne.

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