Boreal cuts ties with novelist Thelyson Orelien after AI-use investigation

Canadian publisher Boreal ended its professional relationship with Thelyson Orelien on October 21, 2026, after investigating AI use in his novel, “It Was Either That or Die.” The decision carries a significant qualification: Boreal said it could not determine the extent of AI’s role in the writing process and might never have a definitive answer.

The move reverses the publisher’s public support for the Haitian-Canadian writer. Just last week, Boreal was standing by him, according to Al Jazeera’s report with AFP. Allegations had first surfaced in September; the publisher said its further investigation produced new information confirmed over the past few days.

The draft files changed Boreal’s position

Boreal said it gathered all the working versions of the novel and hired an outside party to examine the drafts. Its announcement tied the change in its position to results received this week.

The results obtained this week revealed traces of AI tags in the metadata of certain documents.

Boreal, in its statement quoted by Al Jazeera and AFP

Boreal also described an unsuccessful effort to resolve the dispute with Orelien’s help. It said it had worked with him to gather evidence that could establish his innocence. That effort was inconclusive, the publisher said, and Orelien subsequently told it he would provide no further information.

Orelien distinguishes research from authorship

In a statement sent to AFP earlier this month, he called the allegations “slander and heresy.” He acknowledged using research tools “here and there,” particularly for foreign idioms, while rejecting the claim that they supplied his prose.

“But not a single sentence in this book was created by a machine, nor the meaning or the structure of a story that comes from my gut,” he said.

On October 21, Orelien told French newspaper Libération that he had used AI “in the creative process” for “historical research.” He also said he began writing the novel in late 2017.

When the allegations first emerged in September, Orelien said he suspected racism was behind the attacks on him.

A breakthrough novel loses another backer

The dispute concerns a novel that had already secured an international audience beyond its original French publication. Known in French as “C’etait ca ou mourir,” Orelien’s breakthrough book is about migration. It had been scheduled for translation in more than 20 countries, giving the authorship controversy stakes beyond his relationship with the Canadian publisher.

France’s Goncourt prize had already removed the novel from contention after tests using the AI detector Pangram returned what the tool described as a 100 percent probability of computer-generated text. That figure was a detector assessment, not an established measurement of how much of the novel a machine wrote. Boreal’s subsequent decision rests on its separately described examination of working drafts.