Culture
Canadian publisher Boréal severs ties with novelist Thélyson Orélien over confirmed AI use
October 22, 2026 at 01:58 AM
Canadian publisher Les Éditions du Boréal has ended its relationship with novelist Thélyson Orélien after confirming AI was used to write his novel.
- Boréal said an outside analysis of drafts revealed traces of AI tags in document metadata this week.
- The novel was removed from the Prix Goncourt shortlist in September after the AI detector Pangram indicated a 100% probability of computer-generated text.
- Orélien denied the allegations, calling them "slander and heresy" and insisting no sentence in the novel was created by a machine.
- Orélien told Libération he used AI "in the creative process" for "historical research" and said he started writing the book in 2017, before ChatGPT.