Key points
- Goncourt drops a best-selling debut novel
- AI allegations began on an initially anonymous X account
- One jury member called it a lynching
- The author denies using AI
The Académie Goncourt, which awards France's most prestigious literary prize, removed a debut novel from its longlist on Friday after claims that the book was written largely with artificial intelligence. The author, Haitian-Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien, denies using AI.
The novel, C'était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die), is a fictionalized account of Orélien's journey from Haiti to Canada. Rights to the book have been sold in more than 20 countries, including the United States, and Paris publisher Grasset was reported to have paid 300,000 euros for the French rights, AFP reported. The novel has already won several French prizes, including the Fnac novel prize.
The academy said it removed the book "to preserve the integrity of the Goncourt Prize and that of the Academie, whose central role is to promote and honour literature written by women and men," Reuters reported. The academy stated its full opposition to the "creation of texts generated with the assistance of AI" and said there would be no further comment before October 6, when the shortlist is announced.
According to AFP, the academy said "several credible researchers and journalists" had shown the novel was "in all likelihood very largely the product of artificial intelligence."
The decision was not unanimous. Pascal Bruckner, a member of the academy since 2020, opposed it. "I was against this decision. I told them I would not take part in the lynching," Bruckner said, according to Radio-Canada. He called the book "the best novel of the season" and added, "I would like someone to prove to me how an artificial intelligence can write C'était ça ou mourir."
How the claims started
The allegations first appeared on Monday on an anonymous X account called Balance ton Claude, roughly "Expose Your Claude," which had fewer than 100 followers, according to AFP. The account said that running passages through the AI detection tool Pangram showed the novel "was written almost entirely by artificial intelligence." French essayist Samuel Fitoussi later said he runs the account with other people he has not named.
Pangram puts its false-positive rate on books at 0.003%, equivalent to three human-written texts incorrectly flagged per 100,000 human-written texts tested, Radio-Canada reported. That is Pangram's estimate of its tool's performance, not the probability that the accusation against Orélien is correct. Some experts say the reliability of AI detection tools is questionable, according to Reuters.
Separate allegations concern two earlier works, rather than the novel itself. Canadian newspaper La Presse reported that a 2012 short story by Orélien copied passages from a book by French author Louis Pauwels, and that a 2013 opinion piece he wrote was copied from The Philippine Star, Reuters said.
Orélien has denied using AI and has suggested the campaign against him is racially motivated, calling it an "attempt to silence my voice," AFP reported. He has promised a file that will "prove" he wrote the book himself. He has not addressed the plagiarism claims, according to Reuters. Asked about the allegations by Radio-Canada, he said, "I cannot talk about it. I want to focus on my physical and mental health."
His French and Canadian publishers initially backed him over the AI allegations, Reuters reported. His Quebec publisher, Boréal, has since suspended promotion of the book. "Unfortunately, it is impossible for us at this stage to confirm or deny the allegations the author is facing," the publisher said, according to Radio-Canada.
The novel remains in contention for three other major French prizes, the Renaudot, the Femina, and the Médicis, according to Radio-Canada.
Quotes from Radio-Canada are translated from French.
