A prestigious Quebec publisher said on Wednesday that it was cutting ties with an author after discovering he used artificial intelligence to help write a breakout novel.
The publisher, Les Éditions du Boréal, said it would not reprint “It Was Either That or Die,” or any other books by the author, Thélyson Orélien, after finding evidence of A.I. use in early versions of the manuscript.
Mr. Orélien, a Haitian-Canadian writer, is at the center of a literary scandal that has rocked France and prompted deep soul-searching about what the emergence of A.I. means for the future of writing.
The furor erupted last month after social media accounts, including one partially run by a columnist at a conservative newspaper, said that detection tools flagged “It Was Either That or Die” as partially written using A.I. The ensuing controversy led the Goncourt Academy — the institution overseeing France’s highest literary award — to pull the novel from its shortlist.
Grasset, the separate company that published Mr. Orélien’s book in France, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last week, Mr. Orélien said that “not a single sentence of this book was created by a machine, nor was the meaning or structure.” He conceded that “research tools” had been used, “particularly regarding foreign idioms,” without specifying further.
Mr. Orélien eventually admitted, however, that he had plagiarized opinion articles and a short story he published more than a decade ago.
Last month, Radio-Canada, a national public radio station, said that Mr. Orélien had plagiarized four opinion articles published in 2012 and 2013 on French and Canadian news sites, as well as sections of the award-winning 2012 short story.
As accusations flew last month, Les Éditions du Boréal initially said it could neither confirm nor rule out Mr. Orélien’s use of A.I. and cautioned against drawing “hasty conclusions.” The publisher said that it would suspend promotional activities out of concern for the author and that it was helping him compile a dossier of early drafts.
On Wednesday, the publisher said it had ordered an external analysis of the book after Mr. Orélien stopped cooperating with its investigation. “The results received this week revealed traces of A.I. tags in the metadata of certain documents,” its statement said.
“We still do not know to what extent A.I. was used in the creation” of the book, the publisher said, “and we will likely never have a definitive answer.” But it said, “for us, the fundamental issue is one of trust between authors and publishers.”
Les Éditions du Boréal nevertheless called for an end to personal attacks against Mr. Orélien. In his statement last week, Mr. Orélien, who is Black, said that while criticism was always legitimate, the “threats,” “media lynching” and “racist harassment” to which he had been subjected over the preceding weeks had been “unbearable.”
The publisher’s announcement came the day after submissions opened for the “Prix Pascal,” a competition for French-language manuscripts “co-written” with A.I., according to the prize’s website.
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.
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