Short Story Accused of Being AI-written Goes on to Win Contest's First Prize (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0184316392
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/07/05/1422238/short-story-accused-of-being-ai-written-goes-on-to-win-contests-first-prize
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/01/judges-claims-ai-use-commonwealth-short-story-prize-jamir-nazir
In mid-May the story had been selected as a regional winner, but with critics on X and Bluesky " [3]claiming it showed 'obvious markers' of AI use."
> In the wake of the controversy, the Commonwealth Foundation [4]conducted a review of the regional winners, which it said involved looking at drafts, time-stamped documents and notes. "We are satisfied with the testimonies of our writers and their confirmation that AI was not used in their writing," said foundation director-general Razmi Farook... Judging chair Louise Doughty described Nazir's piece as "an original, poetic and deeply moving story...." In [5]a film released by the Commonwealth Foundation on Tuesday, Nazir... adds that he wrote six or seven drafts of his prize-winning story, and also speaks about his use of speech-to-text software, explaining that he could only see three or four lines of text on his phone screen at any one time, so he would perfect each line before moving on, which is how his story ended up being "highly polished"...
>
> Initial social media reactions to the Commonwealth Foundation's announcement of Nazir's win were negative, with [6]one X user writing: "immensely disappointing and disheartening. it feels like they wanted to stick to their guns after the entire GenAI uproar. I might think twice now before submitting my stories here". After Nazir was announced as the regional winner in May, some social media users reported running his story through AI-detection software. "Pangram flags at 100% but also, come on, if you know you know", [7]said Wharton professor Ethan Mollick . However, the reliability of AI-detection software has been called into question.
>
> In a statement to the Guardian, Farook said that "rather than surrender our judgment to AI-detection software, we asked our winners to show their working drafts, outlines, the evidence of an artistic journey. That software, it must be said, is not infallible: it returns inconsistent verdicts and, in doing so, corrodes the very trust on which a prize depends."
>
> "When the machine's default voice is the metropolitan one, the writer who does not fit the expected mould is the first to fall under suspicion," she added. "The more startling her gift, the more her unfamiliar brilliance unsettles, the more readily she is accused of being a machine. A young writer in Kingston or Kolkata, in Kuala Lumpur or Kigali, must now prove not only her talent but her very humanity."
Nazir's story beat 7,806 other stories, the video points out (adding that their prize "demonstrates that in a world increasingly driven by algorithms, the human voice still matters.")
The Guardian notes that the winning story "includes multiple 'not x, but y' constructions and lists of three, which some consider to be signs of AI use," and that critics also drew attention to particular lines like "Sun on galvanise is a cruel instrument" and "Marsha lived two bends down."
In [8]a new interview with the Times of India Nazir says "Now I'm frightened about publishing new work because the attacks haven't stopped."
> Q: Which passages attracted the most criticism, and why do you think they were misunderstood?
>
> Nazir: People criticised a line where I wrote: 'She had the kind of walking that made benches become men.' That's magical realism. Think Salman Rushdie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's a literary technique. In my story, the character 'Zoongie' believes she is so beautiful that even when no men are around, she imagines the benches becoming men who admire her. It exists only in her imagination. People interpreted it literally. There was another line about light reflecting from a sink. That came directly from my childhood. Our kitchen faced east, and my mother liked to keep everything spotless. We used to polish the sink, and when the morning sun hit it, it glittered brightly. People claimed that the image must have been AI-generated. But it's from my lived experience...
>
> I've lived with diabetes for 62 years, which has damaged the nerves in my fingers and feet, and I'm currently undergoing chemotherapy. That's why I began using speech-to-text on my Android phone... I hope this episode leads to a better understanding of the difference between assistive technology and AI-generated writing...
>
> Q: Many acclaimed writers like Ursula K Le Guin, Mary Shelley, and JRR Tolkien have also been falsely flagged by AI detectors. Where does this leave writers?
>
> Nazir: What these AI detectors are saying is that if a piece of writing is too polished, it must have been written by AI. I refuse to accept that. AI was trained on human writing. Large language models, to me, are tools, much like a word processor. They don't replace the human spirit behind creative writing. Ask an AI to write a prize-winning story on its own and see what it produces. You still need human imagination and judgment to create literature.
Nazir added, "What I don't understand is why people continue to question the judges' decision."
[1] https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/20/0636240/regional-winners-of-prestigious-literary-prize-suspected-of-using-chatbots
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/01/judges-claims-ai-use-commonwealth-short-story-prize-jamir-nazir
[3] https://x.com/nabeelqu/status/2056397504824963296
[4] https://commonwealthfoundation.com/2026-cw-prize-update/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOJ0DlDQDz8
[6] https://x.com/MrNarci/status/2071938453923885444
[7] https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3mm5gvwy6k227
[8] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/all-that-matters/are-we-saying-a-piece-of-writing-cant-be-that-polished-unless-ai-wrote-it-jamir-nazir/articleshow/132185703.cms
I feel like with AI there will be no winners (Score:2)
Only losers. Some writing talent will be lost because they would be too timid to be accused of cheating (or simply too jaded). And many readers (myself likely included) will be very suspicious towards anything written after about 2020, however well-reviewed it might be.
Luckily there is already too much good literature written in the last 300 years that even a lifetime will not be sufficient to read it all.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't distinguish it, does it matter?
The point you're having (but drawing the wrong conclusions) is that human writers should not limit themselves from how they write, just because someone could say "AI". Write how you like with the tools you like and you increase the pool of literature people may like. And giving up because AI exists only says lets stop literature at the level it currently has.
Re: (Score:1)
That's simply not true. AI is allowing some writers I know to become far more productive, in one case going from one book every few years to one book every month or so.
And it's not just AI slop, they're interesting stories where they've taken the James Patterson/late Clive Cussler approach of writing the story outline and having the writing assistant fill in the words. The only difference is their writing assistant is a computer, not a human.
Re: (Score:2)
Do they edit the result or just ship it?
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that the context of the pre-2020 works will become continuously more dated. I can't stand most Victorian fiction, even Sherlock Holmes is weak outside of the short stories. Historical fiction really needs to be written from a viewpoint assuming the current context...which means it becomes dated. And this also works, though less powerfully, in the realm of fantasy.
Re: I feel like with AI there will be no winners (Score:2)
As someone who has been accused, falsely, of cheating multiple times, it's inherently disheartening. There's no way to prove you didn't cheat, you can just deny it. There's accusation is enough in more serious ventures to end careers in some instances. Without proof.
I used to work with someone who had a side job at a publishing company, he had a lot of heartbreaking stories from authors who had lost their work when computers crashed and destroyed it. One was in the middle of a legal dispute over authorship
Re: (Score:2)
AI generates output based on whatever was loaded into its model. Just as AI images all look the same, so to will be the stories they produce (until AI starts consuming AI generated stories, then it will become bat shit insane). AI generates stories will be no better than the bargain bin knock off crap that existed before. AI can't innovate, it can only slap stuff together based on probability.
Detectors Grossly Overestimate Their Ability (Score:5, Funny)
There's no way to reliably determine whether something was written by AI or not. They can think it's AI. They can point out similarities between a text and typical AI slop. But those "markers" are circumstantial and don't prove anything. Furthermore, as AI is trained to avoid the tells of the past, it has become near impossible to say that something was written by AI with even vague certainty. And companies that use AI to "accurately detect AI" are liars, thieves, and 100% full of shit.
These are some of the reasons why no one can say whether this comment was written by AI, William Shakespeare, a Yemenese moron, a room full of monkeys with shit splattered typewriters.
Re: (Score:2)
And the boundary is fuzzy. One can get ideas from bots without copying them verbatim. "Never look at bot output" is a silly request.
Re: (Score:2)
There are three types of detectors:
1) Science results that are raw, hard to use and even though they can be adapted to more cases usually limited to a few proof of concept cases
2) Stuff made by amateurs that is far from good
3) Commercial applications
The first are just not made for production use. The second are just not good. And for the third, correctness is not the main incentive. They want you, for example, not to know the full result before you sign up (and possibly pay premium). Before that they just g
Re: (Score:1)
Yes. I can no longer use em-dashes in stories I write or idiots will shriek "IT'S AI!" I never really did the "not X but Y" thing, but the rule of three is an ancient writing rule because three is about the most things an average human can keep in their mind at one time.
It's all 'tarded.
Re: Detectors Grossly Overestimate Their Ability (Score:2)
Does AI still use Em dashes?
Everyone asks it not to. And the models probably adjusted due to feedback.
It'd be like looking for lead in the air to detect a car that drove by. The time where that detection work has passed.
Re: (Score:1)
Using em-dashes is perfectly good and common English usage in writing. AI is using them properly, though using them more than a human normally would.
I haven't tried asking one to not use them lately but when I tried a few months ago it went quite insane and started doing all kinds of weird stuff.
The bigger issue is that the big models like Claude are becoming less and less capable of writing fiction because they're being trained to produce boring business stuff and that eliminates the ability to make up sto
People are really quick (Score:2)
People are really quick to accuse things of being AI. I've lost track of how many times on Reddit I've written two or three paragraphs with citations and someone responds accusing it of being AI. Apparently the bar is very low, and seems even lower if one is arguing for something they disagree with. But I've also had this happen with short stories. I had someone claim a short story I wrote was AI generated when the story was from 2019 and thus predated any AI that could write more than a few sentences.
Does it matter? (Score:2)
Seriously, is the point of storytelling to tell good stories or to write them without AI.
Maybe AI means a Dan Brown can now write more engaging prose, while providing his readers with original stories. Maybe this is a win-win situation.
I think the only qualification for a writing award should be whether the stories are original and / or good.
Re: (Score:2)
I think in general it does not matter, but if there is a "humans (without tools) only" contest, only humans without tools should participate there. In the book shop nobody owes you to disclose their tools, but in a competition people should be honest to fulfill the admission criteria.
Re: (Score:2)
What about "Don't write your stuff while wearing a plaid shirt."?
If the rules can't be enforced honestly, they shouldn't be present. And rules against AI can't be enforced honestly unless you hold the contest in a sealed room with no remote access.
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes one may create rules and trust in people to have some honor. AI is currently a heated topic, but in other disciplines people are proud of doing something with a restricted choice of tools. If they are writing programs in assembler or drawing images in ink so they cannot erase, sometimes the thrill is to reduce the possibilities to make things more challenging for yourself.
For a book you might want to write the best you can achieve. For a story contest, you might try the best you can achieve withou
If the story is good and entertaining (Score:1)
...why should I care?
Ditto if AI finds case-law faster, easier and cheaper for the lawyer's clients, why complain?
It's called progress.
Re: If the story is good and entertaining (Score:2)
I don't know if anyone really complains about AI finding the case law faster than paralegals do. But judges have been known to complain about AIs making up citations that don't exist and then lawyers signing off on them without checking the work.
Good story? (Score:2)
Was it a good story? If it was an engaging read then why care whether AI was used to help write it.
Believable dialog (Score:2)
"I hadn't seen a body put together like that since I solved the case of the Murdered Girl with the Big Tits."
Only bad AI is obvious (Score:2)
AI is trained on human data, so good AI output cannot be separated from human output unless the output is long enough that incoherence seeps in.
As AI models improve, the length of output required to reasonably determine 'AI-ness' is going to increase.
Exactly and just wait until you get your (Score:1)
Electricity cut off just like it already happened to me. The Epstein class wants AI to turn us all into peasants with an orange king, It is absolutely crazy that we are all very very soon going to lose access to electricity because it's all going to go to grift and robots replacing all our jobs. Billionaires got private armies to protect them and they're working on robots & automation to render the consumers they depend on for their wealth moot. Do a bit of googling and you will find a study showing tha