« Le Gros Chaton »: the Mistral hoax owned by its own CEO

Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch reacted to a viral hoax about a fake AI model named Le Chaton Fat, correcting its name to le gros chaton in a viral post on X.

A fake Mistral model named « Le Chaton Fat » (The Fat Kitten) has emerged as the joke of the week in the AI community on 𝕏. The premise: to pass off an imaginary frontier model with outrageous specs as real, boasting tens of trillions of parameters and benchmarks supposedly crushing all competitors. None of these technical specifications are authentic; the whole thing parodies the usual one-upmanship in AI lab announcements, complete with fake leaks and supporting graphs.

The wordplay hits the mark in French. Mistral's assistant was called « Le Chat » (The Cat), a nod to both the chatbot and the animal, before being renamed Mistral Vibe. The meme resurrects the feline in the form of a « gros chaton » (big kitten) that is both cute and monstrous, supposedly poised to dominate global AI.

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The turning point came from the man himself: Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, responded with a simple « It's actually le gros chaton », correcting the hoax's name rather than denying it. The message quickly garnered tens of thousands of views and sparked a new wave of spin-offs. At this stage, the model does not exist: it's a collective joke, which many are now inviting Mistral to embrace for good.