Haitian-Canadian author whose debut novel recently won a major French literary prize has been accused of using artificial intelligence to write almost the entire book, BBC reports on Wednesday.

Thélyson Orélien, 38, won the Prix du Roman Fnac for C’était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die), but the award has been overshadowed by allegations that the novel was generated with AI. The allegation was made by an X account called Balance ton Claude, which said it had tested several passages from the novel using an AI-detection tool called Pangram.

“We tested several passages, from different bits of the manuscript, to come up with the identical result: 100 per cent AI,” the group said. They described Pangram as “by far the most accurate” AI-detection programme and claimed there was an almost 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. He mentioned 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 saying his work was original and powerful.

This controversy comes as Orélien’s debut novel gains recognition in France. He is a finalist for the prestigious Goncourt and Renaudot prizes, while the book has also attracted international attention. The novel follows a teacher who flees gang violence in Haiti before eventually reaching Canada, where he rediscovers what the book 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 the first draft of the novel was written in 2019, before generative AI writing tools became widely available. The allegations have also renewed questions about the reliability of AI-detection tools.

Copies of the novel C’etait ça ou mourir (It Was That or Die) by Thelyson Orelien were on displayed on a bookstore table, with their yellow cover and the graphic illustration occupying the lower part.

Author

Paul Olayioye