The Commonwealth Foundation dismissed accusations that the short stories which won its literary prize this year were generated with artificial intelligence, saying a month-long review had found “AI wasn’t used” to write them.
Questions over the judging process for the award surfaced last month after readers and researchers alleged that several winning stories contained “AI tells”, including repetitive rhetorical constructions and phrasing commonly seen in machine-generated writing.
The allegations were first raised over The Serpent in the Grove, a story by Trinidad and Tobago writer Jamir Nazir, before expanding to The Bastion’s Shadow by Maltese writer John Edward DeMicoli and Mehendi Nights by Indian writer Sharon Aruparayil.
In a statement posted on the foundation’s website, director general Razmi Farook said they had held “detailed discussions” with all regional winners about their creative processes and examined evidence related to the development of their stories, including working drafts, time-stamped documents, and notes.
The foundation said that it didn’t use AI detection tools during the review “due to concerns regarding artistic ownership and consent surrounding unpublished work”.
“Whilst these tools can serve as useful indicators of potential AI involvement, we also recognise the widely accepted view that they cannot provide conclusive evidence on their own,” Farook said in the statement. “Therefore, we sought to gather further information to make an informed and fair decision.”
We have spent the past month investigating allegations of AI use in the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
— Commonwealth Foundation Creatives (@cwfcreatives) June 22, 2026
We held detailed discussions with all regional winners about their creative process, and they collaborated fully in our review. We also examined evidence related to the… pic.twitter.com/FB5DgsLx2G
“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,” she added.
“Therefore, we will proceed with the regional winners selected by the independent judging process.”
The annual prize, launched in 2012, recognises unpublished short fiction between 2,000 and 5,000 words by writers from the Commonwealth’s 56 member nations. Each regional winner gets £2,500, while the overall winner receives £5,000.
When the controversy first erupted in May, critics singled out constructions in Nazir’s story such as “not X, but Y” and repeated uses of the word “hum”, both of which some AI researchers identified as common markers of machine-generated text.
Social media users ran the stories through AI-detection platforms Pangram and Grammarly which identified The Serpent in the Grove as “100 percent” AI-generated. But GPTZero, another tool for detecting machine-written text, classified it as “entirely human”.
QuillBot, a writing and paraphrasing platform offering AI-detection software, found a “zero percent likelihood” of its machine authorship.
Well, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize).
— Nabeel S. Qureshi (@nabeelqu) May 18, 2026
"Not X, not Y, but Z" sentences everywhere, the "hums" trope, and plenty of other obvious markers of AI writing.
A major milestone for AI, at any rate...@GrantaMag https://t.co/BWGBpRasNz pic.twitter.com/U6jWejprFv
The Independent has contacted Nazir and Aruparayil for comment. DeMicoli couldn’t be reached.
Farook noted the controversy exposed the need for stronger safeguards as generative AI became increasingly embedded in creative industries.
“This has been an important learning process around a rapidly evolving issue,” she said. “It has highlighted where our approach to verifying originality and authenticity can improve. Further strengthening our processes is now an immediate priority.”
She added that the foundation had already begun discussions with “relevant organisations” about the appropriate use of AI checkers in literary prizes.
Granta, which has published all winning entries of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize online since 2012 as part of a partnership with the foundation, said this week it would end all external publishing partnerships. “The 2026 selection of the regional winners of the Commonwealth prize caused a great deal of controversy, based on the speculation that one or more of the stories may have been at least partially AI-generated, accusations that were strongly rejected by the authors,” it told the Guardian.
“For the sake of our own editorial integrity, the Granta Trust board has now taken the decision that we will no longer engage in external publishing partnerships.”
Farook said the foundation was “aware of Granta’s change in editorial policy”. “While we respect their decision, we remain confident in the integrity of our judging process and this review,” she said.
She added that the foundation was grateful to Granta for “providing a home to our winning stories for more than a decade” and said it would seek new platforms through which future winning stories could be published.
The foundation will announce the overall winner of the award on 30 June and release a film about the regional winners and what inspired their respective works.
