The writer Thélyson Orélien acknowledges his plagiarism, but not the use of AI in the writing of It Was That or Die

Plagiarism, yes. AI, no. At AFP, Thélyson Orélien affirms that “no sentence” in his novel “was created” using artificial intelligence, as a collective has denounced since the end of September. Accusations at the origin of a vast controversy in the French literary world.

On the other hand, the author of It Was That or Die admits to being responsible for plagiarism, described as “unacceptable errors”. The Canadian-Haitian writer, in a text sent to AFP, presents his “apologies” for these borrowings. In the past, for publications in the Quebec press, the one which benefited from the status of revelation of the start of the school year was strongly inspired by texts signed by the journalist Louis Pauwels, the poet Edward Kamau Brathwaite or the futurologist Alvin Toffler.

The essayist Samuel Fitoussi, columnist for Le Figaro, is one of the users of the “Balance ton Claude” account, which revealed the writer’s supposed use of AI. “Those who liked this book liked it because they didn’t know that it was largely generated by an AI. If they had known the truth, they would have liked it less,” he explained, to defend his approach.

“It is said that It Was That or To Die was written by artificial intelligence. This is slander and heresy. I used tools here and there for research (...) But no sentence in this book was created by a machine,” Orélien declares on the contrary in his text sent to AFP and entitled This novel that I wrote.