Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza has denied using AI to write an award-winning short story after an article in the Atlantic said software had flagged it as almost entirely AI-generated.
Kundizeza’s story The Blue Fighter was announced as the winner of the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writers on October 6. Five days later, The Atlantic published an article by author and journalist Vauhini Vara titled: “Another literary prize winner appears to be AI.”
Vara said she told the story through AI detection software Pangram, which itself uses AI, and considered the story to be almost entirely artificially generated. The exception, she said, was an epigraph from what is described as an unpublished poem by the South African writer Vangile Gantsho.
Vara said that when she read the story, she “was struck by the proliferation of language that is common in AI-produced writing: sentence constructions not x, but y; the overabundance of metaphors; platitudinal aphorisms.
She said: “Taste is subjective, but trust me, this story is bad – maudlin and full of tired tropes. »
Kundizeza responded in a statement on X: “For the avoidance of doubt, I wrote ‘The Blue Fighter.’
“I look forward to continuing to work with the Caine Prize team and celebrating this recognition with the people who helped bring this story to the world. Most importantly, I will continue to write.”
Similar claims have been made recently about other literary prize winners. In July, Trinidadian writer Jamir Nazir won the Commonwealth Foundation short story prize with The Serpent in the Grove, despite criticism on social media saying it contained “obvious markers” of AI writing.
Last month, the novel It Was That Ou Mourir by Haitian-Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien was removed from the longlist for France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt, after an anonymous online account claimed the book was “almost entirely” written by AI.
Price Caine said in a statement that he was looking into allegations that Kundizeza used AI. He said: “When such claims are made, it is our responsibility to look into them. We aim to do this by taking a human-centered approach, ensuring that writers are supported and cared for during the process.”
Its president questioned the reliability of the AI detection software itself.
Ellah Wakatama told the BBC’s Front Row radio show: “As someone who chairs an awards, I’m obviously not against AI, but what I am against is it being used as the final arbiter in this matter, regardless of what the Atlantic says, because they’ve already declared our winner a cheater without properly investigating.
“I’m not happy that the work of writers, and in this case particularly black writers, is the testing ground for something that is, at best, still rough and ready.”
Vara said in her article, and reiterated in an interview with Front Row, that she read a 2021 story by Kundizeza that was tonally and stylistically different from The Blue Fighter.
In his statement, he responded: “To suggest that a writer cannot write in different styles or genres, or significantly improve their writing after five or more years, is fundamentally a misunderstanding of the craft of writing. »
Vara pointed to Pangram’s own research that found false positives were rare, including for non-native English speakers writing in English, as well as a peer-reviewed journal article that found Pangram had “high accuracy” when evaluating fake academic articles created entirely, partially, or without AI. However, she admitted to the BBC that there was “relatively little third-party research” into the accuracy of AI detection software.
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