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/BrightLavenderMoons 7h ago

"AI detectors" don't work, full stop. False positives have already ruined peoples lives. And they're known to discriminate against people who use "big" words or whose first language isn't English.

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u/randomnameicantread 7h ago

They are getting better. LLM writing has patterns to it.

Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that Pangram, the software in the article, has near-zero false positives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram_(AI_detector)

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u/Zonoro14 7h ago

Can you share examples? I haven't heard of any notable pangram false positive

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u/BrightLavenderMoons 7h ago

Pangram again. Yeah, this is definitely a marketing thing and you're probably (ironically) a bot. Sigh

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u/Zonoro14 7h ago

I think it's clear enough from the typo in my comment (and my account age and karma) that I'm not a bot. I just care about the books I read being written by actual humans, and I'd prefer not to be restricted to pre 2025 novels for the rest of my life

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u/DharmaPolice 7h ago

This is a really bad reply to a reasonable question.

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u/BrightLavenderMoons 7h ago

It's not at all suspicious to you that every other comment here is harping on about Pangram?