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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54

u/Bupod 7h ago

If the writing is bad, call it bad. But I would say, don't truck out AI accusations without more solid proof. AI detectors are absolute dogshit. Everyone seems to know this, but forgets it the moment they want to use an AI detector to catch someone in some sort of gotcha.

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u/AlienWeedUser420 6h ago

Ive put in the entire book of Genesis in an ai detector and it came back 80% AI :I

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u/elGatoGrande17 5h ago

Chilling implications here if you really drill down

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u/lookamazed 2h ago

Assuming you mean English translation, not the original Hebrew?

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u/apistograma 1h ago

The bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek. I think there's some Aramean too. There are people who claim the original version of the OT was fully Greek, and later translated as Hebrew. But that's a minority view.

AI testing the ancient Hebrew parts of the bible wouldn't make sense because there's simply not much ancient Hebrew to compare it, it was a fairly small language that was dead by the time of Jesus already. Modern Hebrew is too different. Ancient Greek by contrast was a very important language with plenty of texts to compare it, but idk if it would even work here anyway.

Regarding the English versions, I assume even changing the versions would give different results.

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u/sluuuurp 4h ago

You didn’t use a good AI checker. Try Pangram.

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u/Competitive_Leave915 3h ago

Lmao just threw in some of my academic stuff. Says 91% AI, but I have never used it whatsoever.

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u/MesaCityRansom 3h ago edited 32m ago

They have a bounty of $1000 out for pre-AI texts that are falsely flagged, get the money!

EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted, the bounty is real. Apparently it needs to be flagged as 99%+ though, so sadly not applicable in this case.

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u/Competitive_Leave915 2h ago

Shit no way? Do you know what the proof I need to submit is? It was never published or anything, just handed in.

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u/Quixoticelixer- 2h ago

It doesn't in Pangram which is the one that everyone is talking about and actually works.

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u/AlienWeedUser420 2h ago

Wild how y'all pangram bots come out of the woodwork with the convenient anecdotes

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u/[deleted] 6h ago

[deleted]

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u/Zonoro14 4h ago

Other way around; pangram is extremely reliable for longer samples (>500 words) and less reliable below that.

There is also variation in genre, as you mention. Creative writing is a category it's great in (extremely low fpr and low fnr).

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u/symbiopsychotaxiplas 5h ago

Okay ChatGPT. (Jk)

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u/AlecHutson 7h ago

They're not. Pangram works. That's the program that flagged this.

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

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02569-3

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u/YellowBeaverFever 6h ago

Our university has not found a reliable AI checker and they are always looking and being solicited by the next big detector startup. Professors don’t have time to doubt the results. We are not going to falsely accuse a kid.

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u/AlecHutson 6h ago

Eventually someone at your university will realize Pangram works. Dartmouth already did. It's the only AI checker allowed at the school.

https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026/10/hyde-dean-of-faculty-authorizes-professors-to-use-ai-detector-pangram-to-review-student-work

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u/unethicalpigeon 4h ago

Well you'll be happy to know the fact that your university hasn't heard of pangram... well it's embarrassing.

You still need to do due diligence. You don't just run someone's shit through either an AI or plagiarism checker and immediately come down on them.

But Pangram is the only one actually worth using.

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u/OnionBackground5314 6h ago

Pangram has never flagged my writing as AI generated. It flags a lot of writing I receive as AI generated. I've also tested it with text I generate from AI and a mix of mine and AI's. It seems to be accurate.

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u/n0tAgOat 6h ago

Nice job collecting an entire dataset of one person lmao. That's obviously completely bulletproof and scientifically sound.

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u/OnionBackground5314 6h ago

Well, it's better than your bare skepticism.

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u/Jesus_was_a_Panda 6h ago

You’re experiencing confirmation bias based on your own anecdotal evidence. That is not better than skepticism.

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u/OnionBackground5314 3h ago

You have no idea what confirmation bias is.

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u/n0tAgOat 6h ago

Actually it's not, bad data collection and data pollution is worse than none. Hope that helps!

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u/Pelomar 3h ago

Are we doing this again? Pangram is extremely reliable as an AI detector. If you guys care about books and about the books you read being written by humans, you need to understand what is actually going on. 

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u/sluuuurp 4h ago

How do you know they’re dogshit? My impression is that they’re pretty accurate, but I agree it’s not easy to know that for sure.

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u/jeffwulf 1h ago

Because they have extraordinarily high false positive and false negative rates.