Granta magazine asked Claude AI whether passages in a Commonwealth Short Story Prize entry were AI-generated and received opposite conclusions on rephrased prompts
Claude said it is not a detector and such checks are weak.
#867Alexander Doria@DORIALEXANDERNew development: Claude just told me he officially disagrees with this framing, not what s/he meant.
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquHonestly hilarious that Granta's response to the whole affair is asking Claude whether the writing is AI, a method I would not consider reliable, given that: 1) LLMs tend to 'both sides' these types of questions 2) The way you frame the question to the LLM matters
This is truly embarrassing. I know not everyone is equally proficient or understand how AI works, but seriously, "I asked AI if it was AI" is worse than if they just left it up and stayed out of it.
If the judges had any artistic merit or ability they should give all the writers unlimited ChatGPT and then ask them to write a better story.
The problem isn't that they used AI, that's fine, it's that they used it badly and you're elevating lazy slop!
rohit@krishnanrohitExtraordinary response. As a famous award winning short story writer would say, this is not just constructing the funeral pyre, but actively lighting the match.
To demonstrate, here are two screenshots from Claude about the 'paragraph about the acre', which the Granta response cites as sounding human.
In #1, the model confidently argues that it's 'likely human'. In #2, with modified prompt, it confidently argues the paragraph is AI.
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquHonestly hilarious that Granta's response to the whole affair is asking Claude whether the writing is AI, a method I would not consider reliable, given that: 1) LLMs tend to 'both sides' these types of questions 2) The way you frame the question to the LLM matters
This sort of thing is obvious to people who have used Claude heavily and understand that models can be sycophantic, sensitive to framing effects, etc.
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquTo demonstrate, here are two screenshots from Claude about the 'paragraph about the acre', which the Granta response cites as sounding human. In #1, the model confidently argues that it's 'likely human'. In #2, with modified prompt, it confidently argues the paragraph is AI.
(response link: https://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Rausing-Statement.pdf)
Nabeel S. Qureshi@nabeelquThis sort of thing is obvious to people who have used Claude heavily and understand that models can be sycophantic, sensitive to framing effects, etc.