French-language author Orélien denies using AI to write award-winning book

Orélien, a previously unknown writer whose debut is set to appear in more than 20 countries, was accused by an anonymous X (formerly Twitter) account called "Balance ton Claude" of using AI to produce the novel "almost entirely".

The post, from an account with fewer than 100 followers, went viral and had racked up more than 3 million views on Tuesday.

"Balance ton Claude" says it used AI detector Pangram, which it called the "most reliable" programme of its type, to analyse the novel. "We tested several passages, at various points in the manuscript, and got almost always the same result: 100 percent AI."

'Racially motivated'

Orélien spoke to France's Liberation newspaper to deny the allegations.

"I've always loved creating and writing, I don't see why I would use a machine," the 38-year-old said, adding that he was "in the process of putting together a file" with his publishers to prove that he wrote the book himself.

He added that he believed the accusation was racially motivated.

Boreal, the Montreal publishing house that originally bought the rights to his book, told French news agency AFP it had "taken note of the allegations" and was not "taking them lightly" but added that its confidence in the work remained "intact".

AFP ran the excerpts selected by the "Balance ton Claude" X account through other detectors and obtained differing results.

The verification tool InVID-WeVerify, co-created by AFP, concluded that the passages were "very likely written by a human".

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Seven other detectors – Winston AI, detecting-ai.com, app.its-ai.org, detectgpt.com, isgen.ai, copyleaks.com, ghostbuster.app – produced differing assessments, underlining the difficulty in accurately detecting AI-generated text.

One indicated there was a 100 percent probability that the passages were produced by AI, while two others reached the opposite conclusion. 

In the novel, written in the first person, Orélien tells the story of Jonas Dorleon, a history and geography teacher who flees gang violence in Haiti, embarking on a perilous journey through 12 countries to Canada.

The plot taps into the debate about immigration in Western countries as well as Orélien's personal story of fleeing Haiti, making him a high-profile new literary figure, with The New York Times dedicating a profile to him in May.

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Plagiarism accusations

Orélien is facing further accusations of plagiarism. The Quebec newspaper La Presse said on Wednesday that he had copied entire paragraphs while working for the newspaper as a freelance contributor around a decade ago.

In 2013, a column bearing Orélien's name turned out to be a word-for-word translation of an English-language column written by a journalist at the Manila daily The Philippine Star.

According to François Cardinal, deputy editor with La Presse, who was responsible for uncovering these cases, said they were not isolated incidents, adding that on Orélien's Mediapart blog there is a paragraph that seems to be copied verbatim from an analysis piece published in Spanish in the newspaper La República, written by a former Colombian finance minister.

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In the Quebec edition of the HuffPost, he is also accused of extensively borrowing ideas of the Danish artist and author Pablo Saborio. “A disappointing and inexcusable deception,” according to Cardinal.

Orélien also published work on RFI's Mondoblog, which ceased publication in 2025. In 2013, he published an article about Pope Benedict XVI's resignation that was also copied, almost verbatim, from an article in the Indian daily The Hindu.

A hunt for further examples has begun on social media, with internet users uncovering dozens of articles by Orélien in which he allegedly copies from journalists, Wikipedia pages and authors including Alvin Toffler, Milan Kundera and Victor Hugo.

(with newswires)