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The Anatomy of a Literary Scandal

The pillorying of Canadian-Haitian novelist Thélyson Orélien, accused of using AI to write his new novel, is the latest in a chaotic year for French publishing.

Less than two weeks ago, French literary critics were showering Thélyson Orélien with praise, celebrating his latest novel C’était ça ou mourir (“It was either that or die”), the story of a social studies teacher who flees gang violence in Haiti to seek refuge in Canada. Surging out of the gates with over 45,000 copies sold in the opening weeks after its August 19 release, Orélien’s novel positioned him as one of the stars of the fall books season—and a contender for the prestigious Prix Goncourt.

But the fairytale literary breakout started to come crashing down on September 21, when an obscure post from an anonymous X account claimed that Orélien’s novel was in fact written by artificial intelligence. With screenshots to boot from the AI-verification software Pangram, the X account “Balance ton Claude”—“Expose your Claude,” an AI-era riff on the social-media hashtag popularized by France’s #MeToo movement, Claude being Anthropic’s AI app—alleged that the Haitian-Canadian novelist had systematically used artificial intelligence for the composition of his novel. That kicked off a frenzy that first circulated among far-right-linked social-media accounts. Established media organizations soon started to pick up the story too, running their own tests using Pangram that corroborated the accusations.

Orélien has firmly denied all the allegations made against him. In a September 22 interview, the writer shot back against his accusers, with numerous figures in French literary life also rallying to his defense in the face of what appeared to many like a coordinated sting operation. “Since my recent arrival in France, I have been subjected to numerous racist attacks,” the author told Libération. “I am not sad but angry.”

The ideological lines hardened further when conservative Le Figaro columnist Samuel Fitoussi claimed participation in what he called a “collective project” behind the “Balance ton Claude” account. The accusation against Orélien comes as a double strike for conservative literary circles, with the far-right weekly Valeurs actuelles condemning the “blindness of the literary establishment” and castigating Orélien as a “professional counterfeiter.” Their collective feeding frenzy has as one immediate effect the delegitimizing of a novel that offered something still in relatively short supply in French letters: the perspective of a Black francophone novelist writing on the experience of immigration and identity across the Global South and North.

To some observers, there’s a rich irony to using AI software to identify the use of AI itself. And while most specialists agree that AI detectors cannot provide definitive proof of fraud, the creators of Pangram have stood by their........

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