One month after the controversy began, Éditions du Boréal announced on Wednesday, October 21, that it was ending its collaboration with Thélyson Orélien, author of C’était ça ou mourir. The Quebec publisher states that artificial intelligence was indeed used in the writing process of the novel, whose sales success continued unabated during the controversy: 65,000 copies have been sold in France.
The book was published in the spring by Boréal, before Grasset released it in France in August. On October 13, Thélyson Orélien admitted to plagiarism from his youth, while firmly denying having used AI for this novel. He also denounced the racist threats and harassment he had been subjected to since the affair began.
New evidence undermines the official version
One week before the announcement, Boréal was still assuring it would keep the book in stores, citing a lack of evidence to definitively establish the use of AI. In the meantime, the publisher gathered all working versions of the manuscript and commissioned an external analysis. Its verdict mentions “traces of AI tags in the metadata” of certain documents, meaning technical information automatically recorded in the files. The publisher did not specify which ones, nor in which passages of the text.
On Wednesday, the Quebec house therefore decided not to reprint the novel and to no longer publish any books by the author, according to an official statement. The reversal comes after weeks of debate on the reliability of tools meant to detect machine-written texts, none of which were able to settle the question on their own.
A debate centered on detectors
For weeks, the discussion focused on the Pangram tool. In the end, no probability score settled the case: it was the metadata present in the files that ultimately proved decisive. A method closer to classic digital investigation than linguistic statistics. However, detection has its limits, as it is impossible to know what role the algorithm played in writing the novel.
For his part, the author has repeatedly stated that he never used AI to write. In a reaction relayed by Le Devoir, he maintains that he only used these tools for historical research.
Grasset remains. The French publisher, which initially dismissed the accusations as “fake news,” had still not reacted by Wednesday evening. Yet it is Grasset that accounts for the bulk of sales in France, where the novel was still featured in early October in the second selection for the Renaudot prize.
