Paris (France) (AFP) – Top-selling author Thelyson Orelien is “devastated” by the scandal over his alleged use of AI to write his debut novel and has returned home to Montreal, friends and fellow writers say. Orelien was the toast of the French-language literary world earlier this month, with his migration-themed story “It Was Either That or Die” selling fast and picking up prize nominations and translation deals.
But following allegations started by an anonymous X account, the 38-year-old Haitian-Canadian stands accused of using artificial intelligence to write his novel based on analysis of excerpts by AI-detection websites such as Pangram. He has denied the claims and believes the attacks on his work are racially motivated. However, he has been dropped from France’s top literary prize and had his promotional tours suspended.
James Noel, a Haitian poet and novelist who has known Orelien for 20 years, said he spoke with him at the height of the controversy and found him “devastated”. “I advised him to unplug, to disconnect from all this nauseating attention, this racist hatred that has nothing to do with the controversy,” he told AFP, adding that his friend had been condemned in a “summary” way based solely on AI. Rodney Saint-Eloi, another Haitian writer from Montreal, also defended Orelien, telling AFP that “a young man is being publicly assassinated, that’s what hurts me the most.” His sudden rise had made him “an easily disposable product,” he added.
The allegations against Orelien have captivated France over the last week, focusing attention on whether AI use is acceptable for novelists and leading to questions about the reliability of apps that claim to be able to detect text written by ChatGPT or Claude. Pangram is considered one of the most reliable and testing by AFP on an excerpt of “It Was Either That or Die” indicated a 100-percent probability that Orelien had used AI to produce it. AFP ran excerpts through other AI detection tools and came up with a variety of results — from it being “very likely” to have been written by a human to “100 percent” AI generated.
Orelien has promised to produce proof that he wrote the book himself and to speak out in detail “once things have calmed down.” However, the suspicions about him were further fed when evidence emerged of plagiarism in a newspaper column and a short story he wrote before the publication of his novel. He is widely described as publicity-shy and reserved, making him ill-equipped to deal with the intense media spotlight cast on him over a story that has generated headlines around the world. “He really speaks very little, he’s very withdrawn, very shy, off in his corner…he’s a very solitary person,” Saint-Eloi told AFP. Noël described him as “very gentle.”
“When I met him, I could see a real author’s style in him and I’ve always sensed in him an obsession with becoming a writer and a thirst for reading,” he told AFP. “He’s someone who devours books, who needs to talk about them.”
Orelien fled his native Haiti following a 2010 earthquake that struck the Caribbean island, already ravaged by poverty and unrest. “I arrived like so many others: a suitcase full of dreams and fears,” he wrote in June 2025 in one of his columns for the newspaper La Presse. He became a self-proclaimed “bookworm,” reading Albert Camus, Toni Morrison, and Romain Gary, as well as fellow Haitian writers such as Jacques Roumain and James Noel. His Facebook account, which is still accessible — unlike his personal website — reveals as much his love for adopted home as his native land. “Among Quebecers there is a rare way of helping: discreet, sincere, without fanfare,” he wrote in October 2025. In another post, he expressed his wish for “an independent Quebec, a rebuilt Haiti.”
© 2024 AFP
