{"id":691487,"date":"2026-05-24T12:43:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T12:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/691487\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T12:43:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T12:43:33","slug":"what-do-the-commonwealth-writers-prize-ai-allegations-mean-for-prizes-and-short-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/691487\/","title":{"rendered":"What do the Commonwealth Writers Prize AI allegations mean for prizes \u2013 and short stories?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another day, another literary scandal involving AI. It has been alleged that the judges of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize<\/a> have been duped by an author using AI in his winning entry. Jamir Nazir\u2019s The Serpent in the Grove, which won for the Caribbean region, was then published<\/a> in leading literary magazine Granta, along with other winning entries. <\/p>\n

Almost immediately, it attracted accusations of being AI generated. Users on X<\/a> posted screenshots of reports from AI detection tool Pangram<\/a>, which claim 100%<\/a> of the text was AI authored. Of course, the reliability of such tools can\u2019t be guaranteed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sigrid Rausing, publisher of Granta, which was not involved in selecting the story, said in a statement<\/a> that she showed the story to Claude.ai and asked if it was A.I.-generated. \u201cThe response was long, concluding that it was \u2018almost certainly not produced unaided by a human.\u2019\u201d Again, this may tell us nothing. The New York Times<\/a> and the Guardian<\/a> have contacted Nazir for a response to the allegations, but they report he has not responded.<\/p>\n

Where does this leave literary prizes, literary writing, and the literary short story? <\/p>\n

Razmi Farook, the Commonwealth Foundation\u2019s director general, has defended<\/a> the integrity of the prize\u2019s judging process. Using AI checkers on unpublished submissions \u201cwould raise significant concerns surrounding consent and artistic ownership\u201d. Competitions like the Commonwealth Prize, she notes, must operate on a \u201cprinciple of trust\u201d.<\/p>\n

I agree stories should be received on a principle of trust \u2013 but that may be hard to maintain. This year has already seen revelations of significant AI use in a New York Times book review<\/a> and a debut horror novel<\/a>. Maybe standards for short fiction will need to shift. <\/p>\n

\u2018Like sunrise over a sink\u2019<\/p>\n

The Commonwealth Writers Prize is open to submissions from adult citizens of Commonwealth member states. It typically attracts thousands of submissions each year. Judging panels for each of the award\u2019s regions (Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and Canada, and the Pacific) decide on regional winners, who are all published in Granta. An overall winner is also chosen. <\/p>\n

The Serpent in the Grove was praised by the regional judging panel<\/a> for its \u201cvivid, lush imagery\u201d and \u201cquiet authority\u201d. It tells the story of a young, unhappily married couple, living in poverty in their rural village, alongside their older, gossipy neighbour. A near \u2013 though not entirely accidental \u2013 brush with death unexpectedly unites the three of them, creating an awareness of the hidden, subterranean stories that shape their lives and locality. <\/p>\n

\"a<\/a><\/p>\n

Booker Prize winner Marlon James weighed in on Facebook,
\n Andy Rain\/AAP<\/p>\n

Writers, literary critics and commentators on X and other platforms have derided what they see as its \u201cobvious<\/a>\u201d AI writing syntax. <\/p>\n

The frequent use of \u201cnot x, but y<\/a>\u201d sentence structures and unusual word repetition have been presented as textual evidence. <\/p>\n

The story also includes, to put it charitably, a few choice sentences you\u2019d have to hope were written by a robot. <\/p>\n

As Booker Prize winning author Marlon James put it on Facebook<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Forget AI for a minute. A story won an International Competition with a line like this: \u201cThe girl smiled like sunrise over a sink.\u201d <\/p>\n

But AI usage is difficult to prove. Detection tools are not reliable and have been known to hallucinate their results<\/a>. Just because the story feels AI generated to many readers, with its somewhat overworked, metaphor-laden prose, hazily dramatised action and slippery refusal to commit to a concrete subject or theme doesn\u2019t necessarily make it the case. It eventually concludes with a string of poetic aphorisms: <\/p>\n

A story is a well
It eats sound until somebody throws a rope
If grace is near and hands hold, something breathing comes up.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Rausing has taken a noncommittal stance, stating<\/a> \u201cperhaps we will never know\u201d if the story was authored by AI. <\/p>\n

A new AI milestone?<\/p>\n

If the Serpent in the Grove is AI generated, perhaps a new milestone has been reached, with AI now managing to produce the kind of \u201cquotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story\u201d that United States author Michael Chabon<\/a> warned was coming to dominate publications and prize lists. <\/p>\n

Regardless of its provenance, I suspect that if you entered the prompt \u201cwrite a short story that will get at least a regional shortlisting for an international prize\u201d into the AI platform of your choice, something like Serpent in the Grove would be the likely result. <\/p>\n

Everything about it, from its frequently solid, if routine, descriptive passages (\u201cInside, air clung thick as porridge skin: damp earth, woodsmoke, and the sour tang of fermenting cocoa\u201d) to its occasionally sharp observations (\u201cMen who set traps plan for silence, not for the squeal.\u201d) to its outright howlers (\u201cShe had the kind of walking that made benches become men\u201d) feels true to the form. And like something that could be created by an authentically human literary mediocrity. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s every bit of worthy filler you\u2019ve found padding out the middle of a debut collection published straight out of a prestigious MFA (Master of Fine Arts) writing workshop. It\u2019s every short story you\u2019ve ever skipped past in the New Yorker<\/a> to get to the film reviews and the caption competition. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s the solution?<\/p>\n

Certainly, there is still at least a possibility that this small scandal may fall into the time-honoured tradition of the literary hoax. <\/p>\n

Despite the bio note by Nazir, a 63-year old resident of Trinidad and Tobago<\/a>, claiming to be \u201ca prolific poet and author\u201d, readers have had difficulty tracking down any other works. His LinkedIn<\/a> profile reveals he has previously written on the possibility of AI eliminating jobs and the AI arms race. <\/p>\n

The Serpent in the Grove may yet prove to be a parody or a warning. <\/p>\n

Advances in AI platforms and composition have often been oddly benchmarked through their engagements with the form of the short story. The launch of ChatGPT saw a major science fiction magazine having to temporarily close submissions<\/a> due to being bombarded with AI-generated stories. <\/p>\n

Last year, Sam Altman of Open AI triumphantly claimed<\/a> to have been \u201cstruck\u201d by how his AI model \u201cgot the vibe of metafiction so right\u201d in following his prompt to write \u201ca metafictional literary short story about AI and grief\u201d. <\/p>\n

And AI generation can now clearly produce the kind of technically competent creative writing that The Serpent in the Grove exemplifies (the occasional glories of a smile that is \u201clike sunrise over a sink\u201d aside). <\/p>\n

Perhaps the solution is to more actively look for new forms and structures for the short story. Or even just make a return to concrete detail, grounded specific action, plot. The measure of a successful story is its capacity to surprise us, however it is created.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another day, another literary scandal involving AI. It has been alleged that the judges of the Commonwealth Short…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-691487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}