Novelist Thélyson Orélien rejects AI claims after bestseller pulled from French prize list

A top-selling Haitian-Canadian writer who was accused of using AI to write his breakthrough debut novel denied the allegations Tuesday in his first detailed response to the scandal, while acknowledging past plagiarism "mistakes". Thélyson Orélien, 38, was accused of using artificial intelligence to write his French-language novel about migration "C'était ça ou mourir" ("It Was Either That Or Die"), which was set to be translated in more than 20 countries. The book has become shrouded in suspicion and been withdrawn from the shortlist for France's top book prize, the Goncourt, after tests with AI detector Pangram indicated a 100-percent probability it contained computer-generated text. Read morePrix Goncourt drops Canadian-Haitian writer from top French literary prize list over AI claims "They say that 'C’était ça ou mourir' was written by an artificial intelligence. That's slander and heresy," Orélien wrote in a statement sent exclusively to AFP. "Here and there I did use tools for research, particularly for foreign idioms. 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." At the height of the media...