Thélyson Orélien is accused of using AI to write his (award-winning) book.

The late-summer ‘rentrée littéraire’ in France is, in terms of the hype surrounding it, perhaps similar to our Sanremo Festival. The books launched in September are the ones people will be talking about throughout the year, the ones that will win awards, the ones that will fill the windows of Paris’s countless bookshops (there are around 700 in the city, not counting the bouquinistes along the Seine – in Rome there are fewer than 400, counting the entire metropolitan area). One of the names making waves in this “literary comeback” is that of 38-year-old Thélyson Orélien, a Quebec-based author of Haitian origin who has written four collections of poetry. His first novel, C’était ça ou mourir, published in August, won the Fnac Prize on Monday and is shortlisted for the prestigious Goncourt, the Renaudot, the Femina, the Médicis and a dozen or so other prizes that guarantee best-seller status. He has already appeared on every cultural programme, on both radio and TV, and is being hailed as the ‘rentrée phenomenon’. The book is the odyssey of a young teacher from Port-au-Prince who, as gang violence erupts and his neighbourhood goes up in flames, flees with all his belongings in a plastic bag. Travelling through Mexico and Brazil, through jungles and past ICE checkpoints, he aims to reach Canada, where a cousin lives. A very contemporary story, featuring all those themes of ‘exile and resistance’, as France Inter put it, postcolonialism and the like.

As the French are preparing, as is their custom, to ‘Frenchify’ and welcome the best-selling author, someone claims to have discovered that Orélien’s book was written using artificial intelligence. An anonymous user on X wrote that they had used a piece of software, Pangram, which is designed to detect texts and content generated by artificial language models. According to the user, after analysing many passages from C’était ça ou mourir, the software concluded: “it’s 100 per cent AI”. The publisher Grasset immediately declared, in true Trumpian fashion: “fake news” and “conspiracy theory”. The author, interviewed by Libération—which dedicated its front page to him today—explained that he has always loved “creating and writing, so I don’t see why I should resort to a machine”. He also emphasised that the rhythm and imagery of the book are rooted in his Haitian and Caribbean heritage, and that therefore ‘Western AI detection software’ is unable to analyse its stylistic peculiarities. He described it as a ‘hate campaign’ and ‘a racist attack’. It remains unclear from her accusation whether she considers the software or the X user to be racist.

This development, however, prompts reflection, as it may mark only the first wave of both genuine and contrived exposés, of accusations echoing through the corridors of the Ninfeo and the meeting rooms of Segrate, already teeming with jealousy. Authors may soon find themselves compelled to present pen-and-ink notebooks to secure a bottle of Strega, a gesture that could see forgers resurface alongside photographs of manuscripts placed beside copies of Repubblica, much like the Moro case.The real question is: what if the book shortlisted for the Goncourt Prize had actually been written using AI? No prize? Even if readers still like the book? When AI cures cancer, will we say no to the medicines because they aren’t seasoned with the sweat of an oncologist’s brow?