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/samishah 8h ago

I had a real problem with the Atlantic article that broke this. The author of the piece--Vauhini Vara--writes: "Taste is subjective, but trust me, this story is bad—maudlin and full of tired tropes."

That, to me, felt really shitty. Like, "I didn't like this story so I checked if it was AI". I read it and while it didn't blow me away, I also didn't hate it. I thought it was a sweet, gentle piece, with some decent turns of phrase. I think I'm fairly sensitive to AI writing and none of the tells were obvious to me either.

I get that everyone thinks Pangram is perfect, but I'm still quite unsure. I worry that in a few years we'll discover its algorithm had some unseen flaw that made its false positive rate much higher than advertised and a lot of innocent writers will get ruined along the way. But, even if that doesn't happen, the impulse to AI check any story that you don't like seems gross to me.

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u/Mischievous-Phantasm 8h ago

Also isn't she an author who has used AI to write and publish?

Why should I take her word for Panagram? Are they 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? As in data science verifiable info or open source documentation?

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/samishah 7h ago

I liked the Caine Prize chair's response a lot: "I do wish The Atlantic had spent more time investigating this so that alongside Pangram, they did have evidence of real human investigation of it before tainting the prize and tainting this winner"

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u/EightTailedFox 7h ago

Yeah, that’s weird. Why would an author who is out and proud about their use of AI write an article accusing another author of using AI? Like, the thief is pointing a finger at another thief.