Boréal ends cooperation with Orelien after AI review — France 24

In Canada, publisher Boréal has ended its professional cooperation with Haitian-Canadian writer Télison Orelien. The publisher said new information indicates the use of artificial intelligence in the writing process of his debut novel, It Was Either That or Die, known in French as C’était ça ou mourir.

Manuscript review

As France 24 reports, Boréal collected all working versions of the manuscript and engaged an outside party to analyze the various drafts. According to the publisher, results obtained this week revealed traces of AI labels in the metadata of some documents.

Boréal noted that it does not know the extent to which artificial intelligence was used while working on the book and will likely be unable to determine this definitively. The publisher also said it tried together with the author to gather data that could refute the suspicions, but these efforts did not produce a conclusive result. Orelien later said he would not provide additional information.

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The author’s position and the Goncourt Prize

Orelien had previously denied using AI and called the accusations slander and heresy. He claimed that he began writing the novel at the end of 2017 and completed a first version of more than 300 pages in 2019 — several years before the emergence of AI services such as ChatGPT.

The book about migration was planned to be translated in more than 20 countries. It was removed from the Goncourt Prize shortlist after a check by the Pangram AI detector showed a 100% probability that the text contained computer-generated material.