Granta’s publication of Jamir Nazir’s Caribbean regional winner for the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize draws scrutiny after multiple observers and Pangram.ai analysis identify repeated LLM phrasing patterns throughout the 3,413-word story
Pangram.ai labeled the full text 100 percent AI-generated and highlighted nine distinct segments with typical large-language-model constructions.
#175Ethan Mollick@EMOLLICKWell, that's a Turing Test of a sort.
(But gosh is the AI writing obvious if you use these systems at all - and this is obviously ChatGPT writing, not Claude)
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize). "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
#517Andrew Curran@ANDREWCURRAN_Link to the story: https://granta.com/the-serpent-in-the-grove/
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize). "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
#517Andrew Curran@ANDREWCURRAN_
gabe@allgarbledLiterary journals are now publishing, and awarding prizes to, AI written stories. Surprised this made it into Granta!
#867Alexander Doria@DORIALEXANDERGuess it will be mostly a reveal moment how much people care about institutions (turns out, not much).
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize). "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
#1050Tuhin Chakrabarty@TUHINCHAKRYes 100% by @pangramlabs. @GrantaMag has published some of the best writers of our times such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Franzen, Junot Díaz
We are living in hell !!
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize). "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
@nabeelqu @GrantaMag What struck me is how purple the whole story is. There is some personification/ metaphor at every 2 sentences. How on earth did this win a prize?
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize). "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
#1050Tuhin Chakrabarty@TUHINCHAKRIn the light of this , resharing @NewYorker article from Vauhini Vara :) I am not big on the inevitability train discourse for AI but as community we need to be careful about what we publish.
Ofcourse there can be value in AI generated fiction but without disclosure it feels fraudulent.
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize). "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
Tuhin Chakrabarty@TuhinChakrIn the light of this , resharing @NewYorker article from Vauhini Vara :) I am not big on the inevitability train discourse for AI but as community we need to be careful about what we publish. Ofcourse there can be value in AI generated fiction but without disclosure it feels fraudulent.
#1220rohit@KRISHNANROHITExtraordinary
gabe@allgarbledLiterary journals are now publishing, and awarding prizes to, AI written stories. Surprised this made it into Granta!
#1332Prakash@8TEAPI😂 the humanists hate AI so much they didn’t familiarize themselves with it enough to identify the enemy and are now unfortunately getting “mogged” (technical Gen Z term equivalent to milennial “pwned”)
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize). "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
@emollick Yeah, it's not even subtle.
I think a pernicious side effect of the literary world being so anti-AI is they're very vulnerable to attacks exactly like this. Most of the tech people I know would immediately clock the prose as GPT slop because they use it so much.
Ethan Mollick@emollickWell, that's a Turing Test of a sort. (But gosh is the AI writing obvious if you use these systems at all - and this is obviously ChatGPT writing, not Claude)
#1397Nabeel S. Qureshi@NABEELQUWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize).
"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
Anybody who has used GPT 4o for more than 5 minutes will recognize this voice:
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquWell, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize (The Commonwealth Prize). "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
#1397Nabeel S. Qureshi@NABEELQUPangram thinks so too:
gabe@allgarbledLiterary journals are now publishing, and awarding prizes to, AI written stories. Surprised this made it into Granta!
