France 24 puts Orélien AI dispute at centre of authorship debate

France 24’s arts24 programme has used the dispute over Thélyson Orélien’s novel *C’était ça ou mourir* to examine what authorship means in the era of artificial intelligence. The Canadian-Haitian writer rejects the allegation that the book was written with AI. As this publication reported on Sept. 21, the accusation originated with Balance ton Claude, an anonymous X account that used the Pangram detection tool to claim the novel was almost entirely AI-generated. The post was reposted more than 1,000 times and drew more than 3 million views. Orélien has said he began the novel in 2017 and completed a first version in 2019, before the rise of generative AI. He is assembling material with his publishers to demonstrate that he wrote it himself, while Grasset has firmly rejected claims that AI fed or wrote the book. Boréal, which published the novel in Canada in the spring, has also expressed confidence in his work. The dispute has underscored the limits of AI detection. AFP tested passages through eight tools: two judged them very probably AI-generated, three reached the opposite conclusion and the other three returned probabilities ranging from 7% to 59%. Experts cited by Noovo Info similarly cautioned that such systems cannot deliver certainty, and Pier-Luc de Chantal, a professor in UQAM’s psychology department, said people are not particularly adept at telling human and AI-produced material apart. Pangram’s co-founder and chief executive, Max Spero, has argued that the tool is highly effective for French texts of this length, while acknowledging that statistical analysis always carries uncertainty. He has also said detectors should initiate deeper investigation rather than serve as the final arbiter. The case has had consequences for a book that has sold more than 35,000 copies and won the Prix du roman Fnac. According to BFMTV, the Académie Goncourt removed it from its selection, saying it did not want to leave room for doubt and did not endorse texts produced with AI assistance. Philippe Claudel, president of the academy, had earlier urged caution against publicly condemning Orélien before the facts were established. The novel follows a Haitian history professor fleeing his island home in search of asylum. Orélien has said the accusations amount to an attempt to silence both the book and his voice.