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Haitian-Canadian author Thélyson Orélien has denied allegations that artificial intelligence was used to write almost all of his award-winning debut novel, C’était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die).

According to PUNCH, citing the BBC, the controversy erupted after an X account, Balance ton Claude, claimed it tested several passages from the book with AI-detection tool Pangram and repeatedly received results indicating the text was generated by AI.

Orélien, 38, recently won France’s Prix du Roman Fnac for the novel and is also a finalist for the prestigious Goncourt and Renaudot prizes.

The writer rejected the allegation, telling French newspaper Libération that he had no reason to use a machine to create his work. He said he was preparing a dossier with his French and Canadian publishers to demonstrate that he wrote the novel himself.

Orélien also said the book’s first draft was completed in 2019, before generative AI writing tools became widely available.

His French publisher, Grasset, defended him, describing the allegations as damaging and maintaining that his writing was original.

The novel follows a teacher who escapes gang violence in Haiti and eventually reaches Canada, where he rebuilds his life.

Orélien was born in Gonaïves, Haiti, in 1988 and moved to Montreal in 2010, later working as a journalist.

Balance ton Claude maintains that Pangram is highly accurate and claimed there was little chance its findings were wrong. However, the dispute has renewed wider questions about the reliability of AI-detection software and whether such tools can conclusively determine if literary works were generated by artificial intelligence. The report did not establish that AI produced Orélien’s novel, and Orélien denies the allegation.