Éditions du Boréal announced on Wednesday, October 21, that Thélyson Orélien had indeed used artificial intelligence to write C’était ça ou mourir, and that they were ending their relationship with the writer. The affair, which has been shaking the literary world since late September, thus takes a new turn.
In its statement, the publisher indicates it “commissioned an in-depth external analysis,” which detected “traces of AI tags in the metadata of certain documents.” Metadata are the technical information accompanying a computer file. Éditions du Boréal, which had supported the Canadian-Haitian author until now, even after the plagiarism revelations, will not reprint the novel and will not publish any other of his books.
Thélyson Orélien, however, contests these accusations, which first appeared on an X user’s account. Speaking to the newspaper Libération, he stated on Wednesday: “The book was written by me.” He admits to having used AI in the “creative process,” for “historical research,” but not in the writing itself. Feeling vulnerable, he wonders: “I don’t know what they will want now. After the book, will they come after me personally?” He adds: “What I am going through goes beyond the literary sphere, it’s going too far…”
Prizes and Institutions Divided
The novel had already been withdrawn from the Goncourt prize selection on September 25, following revelations of plagiarism of other works and suspicions of AI use. The Renaudot prize, however, chose to keep it in its second selection. Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud, the prize’s general secretary, said on France Inter on October 8: “Everything concerning AI is still very, very new; in the minds of at least a majority of the jury members, it’s not proven.”
On Wednesday, Philippe Claudel, president of the Académie Goncourt, reacted on franceinfo to the announcement by Éditions du Boréal: “We can only react with sadness. We are at a turning point in the publishing world, because today, we are going to ask the question: but who writes what, and who wrote what?”
Several publishing houses have also adopted different positions. According to a report by France Inter, the Madrigall group, owned by Antoine Gallimard, says it wants to “run” its future manuscripts through an AI detector starting in January 2027. The measure would also apply to works from Denoël, Casterman, Flammarion, P.O.L., and Minuit. Hervé Le Tellier, author of L’Anomalie, winner of the 2020 Goncourt prize, sees it as “a publisher’s decision, in the face of a controversy destructive of the pact of trust between author, publisher, and reader.”
Albin Michel already uses this type of software, without it having the final say: the decision to publish remains with human reading. Éditions de l’Observatoire, for their part, announced on September 25 the creation of a “100% human” label. They do not use a detector and rely on a binding agreement. “They sign a binding agreement in which the author commits not to use AI in the conception of the book,” explained Emma Saudin, literary director of fiction, to AFP.
Conversely, the Pascal prize, founded by three tech entrepreneurs, aims to reward a work co-written with artificial intelligence. Finally, Christine Angot reacted during the program “La Grande Librairie” broadcast on France 5 on October 14: “It’s an attack against literature.”
