AI Writing Allegations Cloud Commonwealth Short Story Prize Winner

Syntactical tics and an AI detection platform’s verdict have sparked controversy over whether a short story awarded a prestigious literary prize was written by artificial intelligence.

The Commonwealth Foundation, which awards the prize, and Granta magazine, which published the winning story, said they had reviewed the allegations but had not reached a conclusion about their validity.

“It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an instance of AI plagiarism – we don’t yet know, and perhaps we never will know,” said Sigrid Rausing, Granta’s publisher.

The story, titled “The Serpent in the Grove,” won the Commonwealth Prize for the Caribbean region on Saturday and was published in Granta.

The judging committee described it as written in “a voice of restraint and quiet authority,” recounting an intense episode in a troubled marriage set on a farmhouse near an enchanted grove.

Shortly after publication, internet sleuths and literary critics focused on the work and its author, Jamir Nazir, reportedly a 61-year-old from Trinidad and Tobago with few prior publications.

Ethan Mollick, a University of Pennsylvania professor, wrote on Bluesky: “100% AI generated story just won the Commonwealth prize for the Caribbean region,” calling it “a Turing test of sorts.” He cited Pangram, an AI detector that flagged the story as AI-generated, adding: “Come on, if you know you know.”

Another commentator, a former Palantir employee, cited “plenty of other obvious markers of AI writing” in the story, including repeated “not x, but y” sentence structures, a now-familiar trope.

Other critics examined what appeared to be Nazir’s LinkedIn profile, where he discussed topics including the AI arms race and AI replacing jobs.

The accusations add to an ongoing debate about whether artists are passing off AI-generated work as their own and whether publications can reliably detect such fraud.

The New York Times cut ties with a freelance journalist in March after he admitted using AI to write a book review that echoed elements of one published in the Guardian.

Publisher Hachette canceled the release of the debut horror novel “Shy Girl” over concerns it was at least partially AI-written.

Such incidents have fueled discussion of telltale AI writing signs: words like “delve,” heavy use of em dashes, and “vague, soft intensifiers” such as “quietly powerful” and “deeply transformative.”

They have also boosted business for AI detectors like Pangram, which claim to distinguish machine prose from human writing.

Pangram performs well in controlled tests, but research into detector efficacy predicts “a continuous technical arms race” between detectors, AI models, and writers adapting their usage.

The Commonwealth Foundation and Granta acknowledged limits in verifying whether Nazir used AI.

The foundation said it did not use AI checkers during judging because feeding unpublished work to them “would raise significant concerns surrounding consent and artistic ownership.”

It said all entrants affirmed their work was original and “personally stated that no AI was used,” which the foundation confirmed through “further consultation.” It added that AI checkers were “not unfailing and infallible.”

Foundation Director General Razmi Farook said: “Until a sufficient tool or process to reliably detect the use of AI emerges that can also grapple with the challenges pertaining to working with unpublished fiction, the foundation and the Commonwealth short story prize must operate on the principle of trust.”

Granta emphasized it had no control over winning stories, publishing them under an agreement with the foundation. It said it input the story into the AI tool Claude, which equivocated, deeming it probably not pure AI but probably not entirely human-created.

“There is, however, a certain irony in the fact that beyond human hunches, AI itself is the most efficient tool we have for revealing what is AI-generated,” Rausing said. “Until the Commonwealth Foundation comes to a definite conclusion, we will keep these stories on our website.”

The Guardian approached Nazir for comment.