Jamir Nazir, accused of using AI, wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize

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What a journey! Jamir Nazir, one of the three finalists for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize who were accused of using AI to create their work, has won the overall prize .

ICYMI:

Accusations began swirling online in May shortly after the Commonwealth Foundation announced the five regional winners who would go on to compete for the overall prize.

Readers, writers , and even an AI expert pointed to what they believed were “obvious markers of AI writing” in the nominated stories.

Citing concerns about “editorial integrity,” Granta Magazine, which has published the winning stories for more than a decade, ended its partnership with the Prize.

But! The Commonwealth Foundation cleared Nazir and his fellow finalists last week after a month-long investigation that, notably, did not incorporate AI-detection software.

Nazir, who has not commented on the allegations, discusses his inspiration and writing process in a short film released by the Commonwealth Foundation.

It’s just about impossible to prove a negative where AI is concerned.

The linguistic tics like em dashes and “not X, but Y” constructions that can indicate a work was AI-generated have their origins in the human-generated works large language models were trained on.

Showing your work with notes, drafts, and other documentation is about to become important for writers and could figure into future award selection processes.

See for yourself. You can read Nazir’s winning story, “The Serpent in the Grove,” along with the other regional winners, at Granta.