Writers across the nation are right now sprinting to finish their short stories before entries for the richest award in New Zealand short fiction, the Sargeson Prize, close at midnight tomorrow (11:59pm to be precise, on Tuesday, June 30). The winner will receive $15,000. But how many writers are creating their masterpieces with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence? It would be a scandal if any of the winning stories were discovered to have used that strange, effective steroid.
Sargeson Prize convenor Catherine Chidgey said she would be “horrified” at the prospect. She used the word twice in an interview conducted on Saturday. Throughout our email exchange, it was plain that Chidgey regards AI as a serious threat. The literary world was in uproar last month when it was alleged the winning story of the Commonwealth Prize for short stories made at least partial use of AI. The author, and the prize convenors, deny it, but Granta has wiped its hands of the Commonwealth Prize, announcing it will no longer publish the stories. ReadingRoom publishes the winning stories of the Sargeson Prize. Would I put a stop to our partnership if one of stories relied on Artificial Intelligence? Probably not. I regard the resistance to AI as a moral panic. I don’t know if it even bothers me that much. You may detect contrasting attitudes in the following interview with Catherine Chidgey.
What can you guys do to stay alert to AI stories? How would you know if an entry was part or even full AI? Are there language clues? Do you use any kind of AI-detection app?
My judging assistants and I are very familiar with AI tics. If you read enough AI-generated fiction, they’re easy to spot. An obvious one is the “not x but y” construction and its variations, eg “Fiction is not lies. It’s not trickery. It’s memory.” (I made that up, but AI often references memory.) (So do I.) Overuse of em dashes, which is the one everyone knows about. Things described in threes, eg “The night was cool, close, intimate.” And human attributes applied to non-human entities! AI loves to do that. Inanimate objects often remember something or hold their breath. Two examples from Jamir Nazir’s Commonwealth Prize story “The Serpent in the Grove”, which is the one receiving the most attention in the debacle: “The grove ain’t forget” and “If he…lets the island put its mouth to his ear, he hears a breath taken and held”. AI writing takes itself extremely seriously. The prose has a heightened, overwrought quality that the bot identifies as Literary but is often nonsensical. In Nazir’s story, a character is “Big in the way of women who never apologise to furniture”. What?
Of course, both excellent and terrible writing produced by humans includes these features – LLMs were trained on human work, and they mimic it – but when a story keeps on hitting those notes, line after line, it’s probably not a coincidence. (That said, dear reader, do not panic if you’ve entered a piece that includes grass recalling the keen touch of the Briggs & Stratton. A few such flourishes are fine.)
Pangram is said to be the most reliable AI detector, with almost no false positives. I’ve tested it with human work and bot-generated work, and it performs well. I haven’t yet decided if we’ll use it for the Sargeson Prize. If we do, that will happen in the latter stages, when our chief judge Becky Manawatu begins her work, and any decision it delivers will be weighed against our human judgment.
Is AI fiction an existential threat? Do you have a zero-tolerance attitude towards it?
It’s getting better. Three years ago, I was on an AI panel at Auckland Writers Festival, and I read aloud two passages from a short story about a woman having an affair in Menton: one by me, and one by ChatGPT. The fake one was laughably bad, and the audience easily identified it. At this year’s festival, again on an AI panel, I repeated the experiment with a passage from my novel The Book of Guilt. Just over half the audience – and fellow panellist Karen Hao, international authority on AI – chose the fake passage as mine. That’s worrying.
My novels are among those scraped for LLM training, which makes me seethe. I struggle with every word I put on the page – I am not a fluent writer – and AI is simply a sneakier and more sophisticated form of plagiarism.
Were you aghast at the Commonwealth Prize allegations?
I was horrified at the allegations, and sad for all the real writers who put so much work into their pieces…but I wasn’t surprised. It’s everywhere now, even slipping through the gates of leading publisher Hachette (see the furore surrounding the novel Shy Girl.) In London, the Houses of Parliament ring with ChatGPT-generated speeches. A prominent writer for the New York Times was outed as using AI to review a novel when a reader noticed certain phrases echoed the Guardian review. And now it seems that the winner of the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition used AI. (Opening line: “The tree knew before she did – and it waited.”) These scandals are only just beginning, I fear.
Granta has cut ties with the Commonwealth Prize. How do you regard that response?
Absolutely justified. Bouquets to Granta for taking a stand.
But it seems no AI was actually used in any of the Commonwealth Prize stories. Its director issued a statement this weekend: “After a thorough consultation with our judges and careful consideration of all available information, we are satisfied that AI was not used to write the winning stories.” Was the whole thing a moral panic?
In my opinion, AI was definitely used in three of the winning regional stories. I’d stake an Acorn on it. From “Mehendi Nights” by Sharon Aruparayil: “They say that a woman alone after dark is not a woman at all; she is a story already being written by someone else’s mouth.” From “The Bastion’s Shadow” by John Edward DeMicoli: “the limestone walls of the office seemed to sweat salt, as if even stone had begun to carry the stories it couldn’t release”. From “The Serpent in the Grove”: “She had the kind of walking that made benches become men.” Come on!
Is AI actually a worthwhile thing that can be employed to write good fiction?
No. It can be used to write fiction that might be published, but that’s not the same as good.
If it ever turned out the Sargeson Prize was won by a story with AI elements, would you step aside?
May the ghost of Frank Sargeson strike me down with his best spade if that ever comes to pass! The thing is, at present there’s no way of proving 100 percent that AI was used, and some writers are skilled at finessing/humanising AI-generated text (or getting AI to do it). So, it’s possible a bit of bot could slip through, which horrifies me. But we’re doing everything we can to prevent it.
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Entries to the 2026 Sargeson Prize close at 11:59pm on Tuesday, June 30. They must be typed and 1.5-spaced in a standard legible font. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Length is maximum 5000 words. In the Open Division, first prize is $15,000, while the winner of the Secondary Schools Division receives $2000 and a one-week summer writing residency at the University of Waikato. Outstanding entrants in the Secondary Schools Division may be nominated for a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship worth up to $15,000 to study at Waikato.
