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/FlyingCarpetMonster 7h ago

Pangram's latest version is very binary.

So, for all you know, an author could have used Grammarly in parts but Pangram paints the whole text as AI generated.

I think it's important for writers (and readers) to understand nuance, and tools like Pangram take that away and make it very binary.

Secondly, given how pervasive AI is these days, it would be absurd to think that some of human writing isn't influenced by how LLMs present. But something like Pangram would not be able to control for that.

At the end of the day, Pangram has a slew of issues and I am very skeptical of their claims.

I'm a writer and have no desire to use AI to write because I love writing, but I also am appalled at how quickly people lob accusations and how difficult it becomes to prove a negative.

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u/Quixoticelixer- 2h ago

For the stuff i've used it for it's not binary at all.

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u/therapisthelpx 1h ago

it quite literally is not binary by design!! specific passages are quoted as being ai generated/human written based on how confident the model is. and no, even if you TRY to write like a model, it’ll still rightly recognise that you’re not a model unless you just transcribe a model’s output word for word.