Télisson Aurélien denies AI authorship allegations

French author Télisson Aurélien is facing allegations that his award-winning novel, ‘Either This or Death’, was almost entirely generated by artificial intelligence. The claims were made by the group ‘Balance ton Claude’ on X, which asserted that multiple excerpts from the book were tested using the detection software ‘Pangram’ and returned results indicating 100 percent AI generation.

Aurélien, a Haiti-born author living in Montreal, has vehemently denied the accusations. In a statement to Libération, he expressed his lifelong passion for literature and stated, ‘I see no reason why I would feel the need to use a machine.’ His publisher, Grasset, has also defended him, describing the attacks as offensive to an author with a unique life story and a strong personal voice.

The publisher is reportedly preparing documentation to prove the authenticity of the manuscript. The controversy has also sparked debate regarding the reliability of AI detection tools, as independent research suggests these programs can produce false positives, particularly when authors use regional linguistic variations such as Caribbean French dialects.