Artificial Intelligence Accusations Shake French Literary World
Thélyson Orélien, a breakthrough Canadian-Haitian author, faces intense scrutiny after anonymous allegations surfaced claiming his bestselling debut novel was written using generative artificial intelligence. The novel, titled C’était ça ou mourir and translated as It Was that or Die, follows a young migrant escaping gang violence in Haiti’s Port-au-Prince. The book achieved major commercial success by selling 35,000 copies in five weeks and won the Prix du roman Fnac on a Monday. Orélien vehemently denies the allegations, characterizing the claims as the work of a racist cabal while preparing a dossier to defend his reputation.
The controversy began when an anonymous X account named Balance ton Claude
asserted that the book was almost entirely machine-generated, citing tests from the AI-detection software Pangram. Following the initial claims, publications such as Le Monde and Libération conducted their own independent examinations using detection tools, while experts warned that such software can frequently yield incorrect results, particularly when evaluating non-English texts.
Literary Prizes and Compounding Scandals
The unfolding controversy has directly impacted the book’s standing in the literary community. The Académie Goncourt removed the novel from the running for the Prix Goncourt following the emergence of additional plagiarism allegations. Investigators uncovered multiple instances of possible plagiarism in Orélien’s historical columns dating back to 2012, which Radio-Canada’s Décrypteurs verified. Despite the removal from the Goncourt list, the author’s French publisher, Grasset, rejected the accusations, noting that work on the book began in 2017, years before the widespread emergence of ChatGPT.
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