A Haitian-Canadian author whose debut novel recently won a major French literary prize is facing allegations that artificial intelligence was used to write much of the book.
Thélyson Orélien, 38, won the Prix du Roman Fnac for his novel C’était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die), but the award has been overshadowed by claims that the book was generated using AI.
The allegation was made by an X account known as Balance ton Claude, which said it tested several passages from the novel using Pangram, an AI-detection tool.
“We tested several passages, from different bits of the manuscript, to come up with the identical result: 100 per cent AI,” the group said.
The account described Pangram as “by far the most accurate” AI-detection programme and claimed there was only a negligible chance of error.
Orélien, however, denied using AI to write the novel, describing the allegation as an attack on his work.
“I have always loved creation and literature. I can’t see why I would feel compelled to use a machine,” he told French newspaper Libération, according to the BBC.
The author said he was compiling a dossier with his French and Canadian publishers to demonstrate that he wrote the book himself.
“My traditions are Haitian and Caribbean. The images, the repetitions and the rhythms are the living word, they are my own,” he said.
His French publisher, Grasset, also defended him, describing the allegations as “atrociously injurious to a writer with an exceptional life-story” and insisting that his work was original and powerful.
The controversy comes as Orélien’s debut novel continues to gain recognition in France.
He is also a finalist for the prestigious Goncourt and Renaudot prizes, while the novel has attracted international attention.
The book follows a teacher who flees gang violence in Haiti before eventually reaching Canada, where he rediscovers what the novel describes as “the right to breathe without fear.”
Orélien was born in Gonaïves, Haiti, in 1988 and moved to Montreal in 2010, later working as a journalist in Canada.
He told Libération that he wrote the first draft of the novel in 2019, before generative AI writing tools became widely available.
The controversy has also renewed debate over the reliability and limitations of AI-detection tools, whose results are not themselves proof that a text was produced by artificial intelligence.
