Acclaimed Author Denies Using A.I. but Admits Plagiarism; The New York Times, October 13, 2026

Ségolène Le Stradic, The New York Times; Acclaimed Author Denies Using A.I. but Admits Plagiarism

"A Haitian-Canadian author accused of literary malpractice — including plagiarizing other writers and using artificial intelligence to write his award-winning new novel — has admitted to the plagiarism but denied using A.I. to write parts of the book.

The author, Thélyson Orélien, apologized in a statement on Tuesday for claiming “as my own texts that are not mine” — a reference to recent accusations that he had plagiarized the content of opinion articles and a short story that he published more than a decade ago.

But Mr. Orélien said that it was “slander and heresy” to claim that he had used A.I. to write parts of “It Was Either That or Die,” a novel published this year to initial acclaim.

“I did use research tools here and there, particularly when it came to foreign idioms,” Mr. Orélien said of writing that book, without clarifying what those tools were. “But no sentence in this book was created by a machine,” he added."