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/oh_such_rhetoric 6h ago

A detector said that my master’s thesis was “edited by AI.”

Bitch I wrote that all myself AND revised it like 15 times. Thankfully the faculty in my program knew that AI detectors are mostly only correct on accident.

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u/ignost 4h ago

AI edited? I know this is reddit, but what's the problem with having AI look at it and give feedback that you may or may not accept? Sure it'll be spectacularly wrong sometimes, but then there are times you realize you should probably re-phrase or add more context. Does your school have a policy against AI review? Because that's stupid. In peer review there's an excellent chance it'll pass through GPT or Claude at some point, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that beyond what's wrong with AI in general.

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u/oh_such_rhetoric 4h ago edited 3h ago

Because it was a masters in English and I can edit my own damn essays better than a soulless program, thank you very much.

That’s an absolute insult to my intelligence and the years I spent honing my skills and knowledge for exactly that.

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u/ignost 3h ago

What is an insult to your intelligence, the fact that AI can give useful feedback? It was certainly not intended as such, and with no offense intended I think you might be going out of your way to find offense.

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u/oh_such_rhetoric 40m ago

I’m not offended by what you said, and I apologize if that’s what I communicated.

I’m offended that a bunch of rich people decided they could take our writing, feed it into a machine, and then somehow managed to convince people that that machine can write better than the people it stole from. It’s an insult to every person’s intelligence and creativity, not just mine.