Thélyson Orélien responds to accusations of using AI for his novel It Was That or Die

At the center of a controversy after being accused by an account on The accusation was launched on Monday by the “Balance ton Claude” account, until then confidential with 92 subscribers, which claimed that the novel had been “almost entirely” written by artificial intelligence. He indicates that he used the American detection software Pangram for the analysis of extracts.

Faced with these allegations, Thélyson Orélien told Libération that “the software is accustomed to French literary traditions and classic authors”. The writer defends his writing based on “images”, “repetitions” and “rhythms”, synonymous with a “living word”, taken from his “Haitian and Caribbean traditions”. “I have always loved creation and writing, I don’t see why I would use a machine,” he continues.

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“I'm not sad but angry”

But the novelist wonders about the questions raised about him, while the post from the “Balance ton Claude” account, which has become very viral, has been reshared more than 1000 times and has accumulated more than 3 million views. According to him, since his arrival on French territory, Thélyson Orélien “has suffered numerous racist attacks”, which he attributes not to “readers” but rather to “outsiders who seek to cause harm”. “I am not sad but angry,” he concluded to our colleagues. The recent winner of the Fnac Prize also claims to be, with his publishers in France and Quebec, gathering the elements that will support his remarks.

The Grasset publishing house strongly condemned “any malicious remarks” against its author. Boréal, the Montreal publishing house behind the publication of the novel in the spring in Canada, told AFP that it had “taken note of the allegations” and was not “taking them lightly”. However, “the confidence of the Éditions du Boréal team in the work of Thélyson Orélien remains complete,” responded the management.