The organizers of France's most important literary prize, the Goncourt Prize, announced this Friday that they have removed a highly praised novel by Canadian-Haitian writer Thelyson Orelien from the preliminary list, following accusations made online that the book had been written largely by artificial intelligence. This decision “is based on the desire to preserve the integrity of the Goncourt Prize and of the Academy itself, whose fundamental role is to promote and honor literature written by women and men,” the Goncourt Academy has stated. The novelist, 38, denied this week that he had used artificial intelligence to write parts of his book 'It's that, or die.' The work had received glowing praise from literary critics in France. It had sold more than 35,000 copies and was well positioned for awards season. The controversy began on Monday afternoon with a post on social media from the anonymous account 'Balance ton Claude' (Renounce your Claude). «Have you heard of this novel? It is the 'phenomenon of literary rentrée'. (…) But, according to Pangram, it has been written almost entirely through AI,” the Internet users behind that pseudonym, created in June and which until the end of last week barely had 92 followers on the platform owned by Elon Musk, denounced on X.