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Commonwealth Short Story Prize, AI and the Trust Deficit.
What a short, fiery minute it’s been since the outcry that short story chosen as the Caribbean’s regional winner for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize was created using AI. Stating that it arose because of the jealousy of another writer, the author explained his writing process as ‘being unusual,’ namely, using technology and speech-to-text writing. The team leader of the prize has now issued a statement. Nonetheless, the repercussions have been damning to say the least with Granta no longer engaging in ‘external publishing partnerships’ in which it has no ‘editorial control’. It made me wonder what ‘editorial control’ means, and how do you know if something’s AI-generated?
Everyone Knows
Everyone seemed to know that the author had used AI. They didn’t guess, suspect or were uncertain of it. They knew that the story was generated by AI. How?
As it happened, a week ago, I shared with a writer friend an email I received from a literary agent rejecting a submission I’d made. He responded by saying that the email was generated by AI. “It’s in the language,” he said. I read the email several times and I didn’t see it. I still don’t.
That said, there are times when I’ve received emails and known, immediately, that they aren’t genuine. For example, I received a glowing email from a literary agent setting out the merits of my novel and offering to represent me. In another, I was invited to speak at a prestigious literary event. What was the difference with these examples?
For one, what was being offered was simply too good to be true. Also, to respond to their offers, I had to reply to a generic
Writing Tells
Apparently, those in the know claimed that by the time they read the first three sentences of ‘The Serpent in the Grove’, they knew the story was AI-generated. This, I learnt, was because ‘the story features items arranged in threes and “not x, but y” constructions,…’ For example: ‘They say the grove still hums at noon. Not the bees’ neat industry…’ Moreover, of the many responses, both online and offline, the ones that made me sit up were the following kind: This is what happens when people don’t do enough training in their line of work. How could they not know the most basic LLM writing tells. Add to this were terms like ‘obvious markers of AI-generated writing.’
The more I read of this outcry, the more I began to worry that I was going to be lumped into the category of the ‘untrained people’. This was precisely why I was heartened when I read Tanju Solanki’s piece, ‘Oh, so AI writing is here?’ published on 28 May 2026. I exhaled when I read the standfirst: ‘I have never been scared reading for TBLM; this time I am a bit jittery.’ Thank God I’m not the only one.
Trust Deficit
Generally, people in the industry are taking a somewhat fatalistic approach: AI is going to take over our careers as writers and we must do everything to stop it. This seems to stem from the belief that people are trying to cheat the system and will, therefore, ‘break it’ for everybody. In other words, there is now an all-round trust deficit in the publishing industry.
To an extent, this is true. I know of newspaper columnists who have titles to their names, but can barely string a sentence in English and get someone to write their published pieces. Then, there was the time a non-fiction piece I co-wrote was accepted for publication. When I opened the newspaper, not only was my name omitted from the piece, everything I wrote was placed in inverted commas. It was as though my co-author had had a face-to-face interview with the journalist and was being quoted.
With such unethical practices in play, does ‘having editorial control’ truly mean, ‘We will not publish writers we don’t trust?’
Mending the Situation
I refuse to accept that writers should now purposely insert typos in their pieces or avoid using the ‘not x, but y’ construction. Making sure that what you submit is the very best it can be is good practice. And writing techniques which help my words connect with a reader shouldn’t be discarded, and only because a machine can do this work. Also, am I now expected to waste time making sure every draft of my story is kept, time stamped and so on just to prove that I wrote the story? That makes absolutely no sense.
What is the way forward? Is there one?
I do not have an answer that will solve the problem by any means. However, I’ve observed two things and I’d like to share them, please. Perhaps, they can be built upon to create a writing environment that is beneficial to everyone in the industry.
The first is that I’ve often wondered how competitions manage the volume of submissions they receive. Some receive no more than 100 stories and some, like the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, receive thousands. Then, there are those who cap the submissions they can receive because they have limited manpower. Perhaps, this is a way ensuring that it’s quality that remains uppermost within the industry from writing a story through to editing and the eventual published piece.
The second has an unexpected source – the last three words in a statement made by Cardinal Blasé Cupich of Chicago during the recent release of Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas: “There is a need for the wisdom that the church’s tradition can bring to this discussion of how to use AI in a way that preserves human dignity.”
If we can use what the Cardinal has said as a baseline, and ensure that we’re all trustworthy, we could find a way to preserve the dignity of writers, those who run competitions, editors, publishing houses, etc. It’ll be a starting point out of this literary swamp in which we all find ourselves.
Possible?
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Resources :
· Creamer, Ella. ‘Granta stops publishing short story award winners over AI controversy’, The Guardian, 20 June 2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/20/granta-magazine-commonwealth-short-story-prize-ai> [accessed 26 June 2026]
· Wagner, Erica. ‘My writing process is unusual,’ says prize-winning author accused of being AI’, The Observer, 24 June 2026. <https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/my-writing-process-is-unusual-says-prize-winning-author-accused-of-being-ai> [accessed 26 June 2026]
· Dias, Elizabeth. To understand Pope Leo’s efforts on AI, look at the man three seats away.’ The Star, 31 May 2026. <https://www.thestar.com.my/news/focus/2026/05/31/to-understand-pope-leos-efforts-on-ai-look-at-the-man-three-seats-away> [accessed 26 June 2026]
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Aneeta Sundararaj is an award-winning short story writer. To know more about her work, visit http://www.howtotellagreatstory.com and http://aneetasundararaj.com
