The controversy surrounding the Commonwealth Prize shows that the literary world is not ready for artificial intelligence

Since 2012, British literary magazine Grant Published the regional winners of the annual Commonwealth Short Story Prize. However, there was something strange this year about one of the selections for the prestigious award: it appeared to have been written by artificial intelligence.

Jamir Nazir’s “The snake in the orchard” It contains many of the hallmarks of the prose generated by LLM—mixed metaphors, alliteration, and triptychs. (I realize this is also a list of three, and I promise I wrote this post myself, without help, as I write the whole thing.) I’ll admit that I wasn’t initially convinced by the claim that Nazir’s story was generated by artificial intelligence. I know people use MBAs to help them write — or write for them, period — but I was wary of the kind of AI paranoia that developed among my peers. Em dashes are supposed to be a tell to the AI, as are the word “delve” and the menus mentioned above. Short sentences are also effective, especially when used to connect a succession of longer sentences.

But, as a human being, I have certainly used all of the above in my writing before. After all, LLM holders are trained in human writing. They reflect what they have been fed. However, there is an eerie quality to the AI-generated prose. There’s something strange about this, even if you can’t tell what it is right away. If there are specific AI narratives, and I’m using those now, how do you know I actually wrote this?

Nabeel Qureshi, a former visiting scholar in artificial intelligence at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, was among the first to point out the suspected use of artificial intelligence in Nazir’s story. For Qureshi, the first two sentences were proof enough.

They say the orchard is still buzzing at noon. Not the elegant industry of bees or the clean rasp of a sword in the air, but the sound of the belly – as if the earth were swallowing up a cry and carrying it there.

“In general, AI writing has a special rhythm that I have learned to capture that is difficult to describe,” Qureshi told me via email. “There’s a wide range from ‘the AI ​​helped me edit’ to ‘the AI ​​wrote this’ – this case feels to me like the end of that, although of course I don’t know that for sure.”

The problem is that even when there is widespread doubt about the use of artificial intelligence, none of us know for sure. In a statement, the Commonwealth Foundation’s director-general, Razmi Farooq, said the organization was aware of the claims related to artificial intelligence in the winning stories, including Nazir’s. Farouk said that all writers who submit works for the award are asked whether they are submitting original, unpublished works, and that all shortlisted writers have personally stated that artificial intelligence was not used to help them craft their stories.

“Until a tool or process emerges that is sufficient to reliably detect the use of AI and that can also address the challenges of working with unpublished fiction, the Foundation and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize must operate on the principle of trust,” Farouk said.

GrantFor its part, Nazir’s story was shown through Claude “and asked if it was produced by artificial intelligence,” said publisher Sigrid Rausing. He said in a statement. “The response was long, concluding that it was almost certainly not produced without human assistance.” But Cloud is not an AI detection tool, it is a chatbot powered by a large language model. Although AI tools are often better than human readers at spotting prose produced at the LLM — or at least those that judge literary prizes — GrantThe ‘statement’ indicates that they went to the source to ask whether the story in question was actually produced by AI, showing that the magazine itself probably doesn’t understand how AI works either.

“The judges may have now awarded an award for a case of AI plagiarism – we don’t know yet, and we probably never will,” Rausing said.

Publications are increasingly being made They were tricked into playing AI-generated storiesSome are “written” by “authors” who do not actually exist. There was suspicion that Nazir himself was a fake – although author Kevin Jared Hussain, a previous winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, has confirmed that Nazir is a real person, and Shared messages you’ve exchanged recently With a foreshadowing about the suspicions of the use of artificial intelligence in his story. Nazir too He published a poetry collection In 2018.) Nazir did not respond to him EdgeRequest for comment. In March, Hachette I pulled out the post From the horror novel by Mia Ballard Shy girl After its author was accused of using artificial intelligence, although Ballard denied using it and blamed a paid editor.

There is also the question of whether there is any acceptable way for authors and journalists to use AI. Prose generated by LLM is clearly prohibited, but what about using AI to generate ideas, or for research? What about AI transcription services? At what point does relying on these tools mean the work is no longer yours? This week, it’s Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk I confess She uses artificial intelligence to aid her creative process — the other end of the spectrum of AI use mentioned by Qureshi, but troubling for readers who have admired a writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

“Often, I simply put into the machine a directed thought: ‘Dear, how can we elaborate this beautifully?’” said Tokarczuk, who received the highest honor for literature in 2018.

“Although I know of its hallucinations and its many factual errors in the fields of quantitative economics or factual data, I must admit that in the realm of fluid literary imagination, this technology is an asset of incredible power. At the same time, I feel an acute human sadness for an age that is disappearing and will never return. I am saddened by the passing of traditional literature written in isolation over the course of months, a work conceived in the mind of a single conscious individual. In all this world, I am very sad for Balzac, for Cioran, And the unique Nabokov, because despite my enthusiasm, I don’t think any modern chat has been able to speak in their wonderful style.

Tokarczuk’s comments, made in Polish at a recent event in Poznań, had the misfortune of going viral around the same time as the Commonwealth Prize controversy. (We’ve had her notes translated into English by a human.) But she is more ambivalent about AI than the headlines surrounding the event suggest. Tokarczuk explained her use of artificial intelligence in a Three-point statement shared with Lit Hub In it, she explained that she did not use artificial intelligence to write her next book, but rather used it to “document and verify facts faster,” although she independently verifies the information herself.

She continued: “Sometimes I am inspired by dreams, but before the experts cram this sentence and tear it apart, I hasten to report that it is my own dreams.”

The uproar over Tokarczuk’s initial comments — and the need she felt to explain her position — points to a larger, and not at all unwarranted, paranoia in publishing about the use of artificial intelligence. The prose generated by LLM may be the new normal, but is this what anyone wants? Thousands of people Threatened to boycott Barnes & Noble After CEO James Daunt said he had no problem selling books written with AI, as long as the books contained a disclaimer specifying they were not written by a human. Daunt later retracted his comments, but not completely. He told the newspaper: “Banning books is a clear and present danger, so we are very cautious with calls to ban any books.” Los Angeles Timeswhile also ensuring that “AI-generated books masquerading as real authors are not sold.”

However, none of this explains the uncanny quality of AI-generated work, or what distinguishes bad prose produced by MSc from bad human writing. When I ran Nazir’s story through Pangram, an AI and plagiarism detection software, it was 100% AI generated. According to Pangram, the most telling tale is Nazir’s use of trinities. The word “stubborn,” which is six times more likely to appear in AI-generated texts than those written by humans; The phrase “as if it were” is five times more likely to appear. But here we have another list of three, written by me, as a human being.

Unsatisfied, I ran an unpublished excerpt from my upcoming book, which I’m currently editing, through Pangram. Only one paragraph is included two Triads. (It’s not a very good section of the book, which is why I’m editing it). Pangram said the excerpt was 100 percent human written, which is true, but I was still unsatisfied. I ran another snippet – which is better I think – and it said the same thing. When I played the first chapter of edge Narration by editor Kevin Nguyen, MO documentsThrough the pangram, the result was the same. Pangram itself has run every Commonwealth Award winner through its programmes, and Found it Two of the 2026 winners, as well as the 2025 winner, appear to have been produced by artificial intelligence. The work produced by man has a kind of indescribable quality, as does its opposite. Maybe AI-generated prose is like obscenity: you know it when you see it, even if you don’t know why.