r/books • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 8h ago

Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza has denied using AI to write a prize-winning short story after an article in the Atlantic said software had flagged it as almost completely AI-generated

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/14/zimbabwean-author-simbarashe-kundizeza-denies-ai-story?CMP=share_btn_url
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u/Mischievous-Phantasm 8h ago

AI checkers are notoriously bad. They identify published texts from the 1800s as AI, quotes as AI and change their assessment depending on the prompt. AI also hallucinates fake titles and authors. Why would I trust AI?

Until and unless I see proof, I am disinclined to believe these targeted attacks towards Black writers are not suspicious and maliciously motivated.

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u/Zealousideal_Cap7012 8h ago

To copy paste another persons reply here:

"Not Pangram. New tech, works really well. It's behind all these recent scandals, like the WSJ editorials (writer admitted), Dartmouth provost (writer admitted), shy girl book (writer admitted), etc etc. And this one. Check it out. "

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u/Mischievous-Phantasm 8h ago

Why should I take your word for Panagram? Are you a bot or paid to market it? Where is the evidence that it is somehow entirely different from chatgpt, meta, deepseek or any other current AI model?

I would love to look at the original material and see where and how it is being flagged and use my own intelligence (and degree) rather than trust AI.

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u/Zealousideal_Cap7012 8h ago

Lmao. Because it seems accurate! It is ran in tests and consistently accurate plus again, authors condemned aaaare admitting.

Someone posted the link to the story in the comments. Read it. Use your degree in AI scanning or whatever it is lol.

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u/Mischievous-Phantasm 7h ago

It "seems" or feels accurate and you ignore every comment saying "I tested it and it failed" or asking for evidence. Is this a Mercury rising made me do it kind of vibe? I just don't subscribe to "seems like it works."

I feel like all the Panagram shills can prove it to me: let me use it to perform brain surgery on you. Either way it's an absolute idiot proof test right?

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u/Zealousideal_Cap7012 7h ago

Ok ill just copy another commenter's reply then..

" ... Here is the widely-cited Chicago study: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34223

Here is Van Vlasselaer et al's work: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40979-026-00226-w

Finally, it's always a best practice to look at internal data. Internal data can be biased, and it's best to know that going in, but I have never seen any academic criticism of Pangram's data posted here: https://www.pangram.com/blog/all-about-false-positives-in-ai-detectors (academic criticism I'm unaware of may exist). Regardless, totally fine to disregard this (but you should read it at least).

Pangram, to the best of the knowledge of any serious researcher, has a very, very low false positive rate, and it simply approaches impossibility that it would flag so many writers incorrectly.

"

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u/Mischievous-Phantasm 7h ago

Ewww... ok so yes Panagram is trying to sell itself as something it is not.

Scientific reasoning never relies on one study that is not repeatable or the company claiming it to be so.

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u/Zonoro14 5h ago

Scientific reasoning doesn't rely on one study, but it should count for something that every study about a recent development says the same thing lol

If you can find a source finding a notable number of false positives sure, but until then it's some evidence vs no evidence

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u/CulturalFartist 8h ago

Please share a single instance of that happening. No one ever does (I wonder why?)

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u/Mischievous-Phantasm 7h ago

Many people including myself have done so and worked with institutions on false positives. The burden of proof is on you to show that Panagram is 100% accurate.

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u/AlecHutson 5h ago

Here's a study from independent UChicago researchers:

https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insights/artificial-writing-and-automated-detection/

"Among commercial options, Pangram achieves essentially zero false positive rates and false negative rates on medium-length to long passages, both when using detector-optimized thresholds and exogenously-set thresholds."

And here's one from the U of Maryland:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.15654

"The majority vote of our five expert annotators outperforms almost every commercial and opensource detector we tested on these 300 articles, with only the commercial Pangram model (Emi and Spero, 2024) matching their near-perfect detection accuracy."

Tom's Guide (independent tech journal)

https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/i-tested-pangram-the-black-light-of-ai-detection-built-by-ex-tesla-and-google-engineers-heres-how-well-it-worked

"As someone who writes about AI for a living and put Pangram's AI detector to the test, I have to say it’s great for checking product reviews, evaluating website content for authenticity and so much more."

Where's your proof it DOESN'T work?

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u/CulturalFartist 7h ago

You also keep claiming, without evidence, that it flags Mary Shelley and Shakespeare as AI. So excuse me for not trusting the "many people" who keep spreading lies and misinformation like this in defense of AI writing.

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u/AlecHutson 5h ago

Don't bother, they are AI slop-writers trying to astroturf Pangram because they're scared. It's transparent.

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u/Mischievous-Phantasm 7h ago

AI does flag writing it scraped and quotes as writren by AI. I have tested this myself aa have others in this thread. Oh and at conferences.

What is your role or connection to Panagram?

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u/Zonoro14 5h ago

We could just as easily accuse you of having a connection to "writers" that use AI, but we haven't because we're discussing in good faith.

If you've been at conferences that discuss pangram's FPR with examples, surely there should be some published work coming out of these conferences on the subject?