Boréal cuts ties with Orélien after AI markers found in novel files
The publisher will not reprint “C’était ça ou mourir,” though it says the full extent of any AI use may never be known.
Les Éditions du Boréal has ended its professional relationship with Thélyson Orélien after an external review found artificial-intelligence markers in metadata associated with some working documents for his debut novel, C’était ça ou mourir. The Quebec publisher said it would neither reprint the book nor publish further work by Orélien.
The finding did not establish how extensively AI was used. Boréal said it did not know the extent of any use in creating the novel and was unlikely ever to have a definitive answer, but concluded that the matter raised a fundamental question of trust between an author and publisher.
Boréal and Orélien had initially tried to compile a detailed account of the book’s development intended to show that it had not been AI-written. As reported Oct. 17, Orélien had already ended his effort to assemble evidence about the novel’s origins after that process failed to settle the dispute.
The publisher then commissioned an external analysis of all working versions of the manuscript. It said the results, received this week, showed traces of AI markers in the metadata of certain documents. Boréal also said AI played no part in its own editorial work, which began after it received a complete manuscript in September 2025 and included exchanges with the author, language editing and proofreading.
Orélien has denied using AI to write C’était ça ou mourir, maintaining that no sentence in it was machine-generated. He has said he used AI tools only occasionally for research, particularly foreign idioms, and that the text, structure and plot were his own. He said he began work on the novel in 2017 and completed a first draft in 2019.
The allegations first surfaced on Sept. 21, when the anonymous X account Balance ton Claude posted screenshots of excerpts run through Pangram, an AI-detection tool. Pangram assessed the novel as entirely generated by AI, according to CBC News. The accusations appeared on the day the novel won the Prix du roman Fnac; it was later removed from consideration for the Prix Goncourt.
The novel, about a Haitian migrant’s departure for Canada and based on Orélien’s experience leaving Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, had reached tens of thousands of Francophone readers and attracted international publishers, Boréal said. The publisher said editorial collaboration must depend on trust rather than surveillance, while condemning hateful messages and personal attacks directed at Orélien.