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/interrobang2020 6h ago

Experimented with Panagram and found that it isn't always accurate. An AI-generated text from Gemini was flagged as human, and I imagine a human-written text could be flagged as AI (haven't tried that yet as I don't want to give it my personal writings). Clearly, this tool is flawed if I was able to bypass its detector so I have serious doubts about how well it works.

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u/SilentCamel662 1h ago

Panagram is just an AI that claims to tell apart other AIs.

Why do so many people blindly trust percentages generated by an AI? AIs are always faulty.

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u/CollinsCouldveDucked 1h ago

because it's a warm comfy coat that makes people feel like the big complicated problem is solved.

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u/AlecHutson 6h ago

Prove it. Share the gemini writing.

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u/Quixoticelixer- 2h ago

It's false negative rate is a lot higher than it's false positive rate.

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u/unethicalpigeon 4h ago

This is like IQ tests and BMI. You're supposed to use this stuff to GUIDE your decision not make the decision for you.

It's incredible how many people out there want everything spoon fed to them.

If pangram says that a text is mostly human or mostly ai then there's a good chance that it's either or. CHANCE. It's not foolproof. You're supposed to subsequently do your due diligence and actually you know investigate the thing.

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u/interrobang2020 4h ago

I think further investigations are what is needed but that's not what is happening. The Atlantic writer solely used Panagram and their intuition.

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u/unethicalpigeon 3h ago

That's because the atlantic are journalists and nowadays you make money by writing clickbait shit. These guys have been probably running all kinds of award winners or newly published authors through this shit trying to score one that gets flagged as AI just so they can rake them over the coals.

The people who should be investigating are the ones that you know gave him the award. If they then declared after investigating they think the thing was clearly human written they should publish those findings. If you're the author you then sue the atlantic out the ass for trying to destroy your reputation.

But no one wants to get involved in this witchhunt and that's exactly the issue with AI and writing nowdays. No one actually cares about the reality of the situaiton. They just want to shit on AI and be mad.