Short story accused of being AI-written wins overall Commonwealth prize

A story widely accused on social media of being written using AI has gone on to win the overall Commonwealth short story prize.

Jamir Nazir’s story The Serpent in the Grove went viral after being named as a regional winner in mid-May, with critics on X and Bluesky claiming it showed “obvious markers” of AI use. The literary magazine Granta subsequently pulled out of its long-running agreement to publish the Commonwealth winners.

In the wake of the controversy, the Commonwealth Foundation 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.

Nazir will receive an additional £2,500 on top of the £2,500 he won for being named the Caribbean winner last month. Judging chair Louise Doughty described Nazir’s piece as “an original, poetic and deeply moving story”.

The story includes multiple “not x, but y” constructions and lists of three, which some consider to be signs of AI use. Critics also drew attention to particular lines, including: “Sun on galvanise is a cruel instrument”; “She had the kind of walking that made benches become men”; and “Marsha lived two bends down … [she was] big in the way of women who never apologise to furniture”.

In a film released by the Commonwealth Foundation on Tuesday, Nazir says that VS Naipaul and Derek Walcott had been significant influences on him. He 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”.

“This story began in my childhood in rural Trinidad,” he said on the inspiration behind his story. “Each day, I walked to school past rum shops where cane workers and labourers gathered. I remember the voices, the laughter, the arguments and conversations that shaped village life.”

Initial social media reactions to the Commonwealth Foundation’s announcement of Nazir’s win were negative, with 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”, 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 did not provide a comment in response to a Guardian request.