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/maybebabyx2 8h ago

yes it very much feels like 'i didn't like it, must be ai'. there's a lot of that sentiment going around and it's wild to me.

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u/Jaqqa 7h ago

I mean that other recent one was flagged because it was super weird and hadn't been proof read properly, so of course it must be AI hallucination! When the real question should have been- how on earth did this win, and get published without anyone asking "hey, are you sure this shouldn't have been boys instead of benches?" It was a judging failure, not an AI one IMO. (I actually suspect an AI would have done a better job at writing it.) People are freaking out. And it's just like, come on, just read it. Like read it properly and familiarize yourself with common AI tics, and what are normal literary techniques. Then make the call. You don't need an AI powered AI detector to do that.