A winner of the Commonwealth Prize has been suspected of using AI
The short story *The Serpent in the Grove* by Jamir Nazir, which won the Caribbean category of the prestigious Commonwealth Prize, has found itself at the center of a major scandal. Some social media users and a number of major media outlets, including The New York Times, have expressed suspicions that the text may have been generated using artificial intelligence.
Gizmodo reports on this. Currently, there is no direct evidence of AI-generated plagiarism, and the accusations are based primarily on readers’ assumptions and conflicting results from AI detectors.
Critics note that the text features an overly figurative style and turns of phrase often characteristic of neural networks. At the same time, the author’s defenders point to the presence of non-standard and grammatically playful sentences that are atypical for standard AI generation. The situation is complicated by the fact that Granta editor Sigrid Rausing issued an ambiguous statement. She ran the story through the Claude language model, which suggested that AI might have been used to generate certain passages. Razmi Farook, director of the Commonwealth Prize, stated that the organization is currently analyzing the incident and reviewing the reliability of its monitoring systems.
Amid the scandal, a wave of accusations has spread to other texts on the Granta website. The publication’s editorial team has already added a special note assuring readers that it takes the situation seriously but will not remove the winners’ works without irrefutable evidence. It is known that Jamir Nazir is a real person and resides in Trinidad and Tobago. He received £2,500 for winning the regional category. The name of the grand prize winner, who is eligible for £5,000, is set to be announced on June 30. Experts believe that even with the partial use of AI, proving the author’s guilt will be nearly impossible.
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