‘Obvious markers of AI’: doubts raised over winner of short story prize

Key points

• A few syntactical tics – and the verdict of an AI detection platform – have sparked a furore over the possibility that a short story given a prestigious literary award was written by AI.
• The foundation that awarded the prize and Granta, the magazine that published the winning story, said they had considered the allegations but had not reached a conclusion as to whether they were true.
• “It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an instance of AI plagiarism – we don’t yet know, and perhaps we never will know,” the publisher of Granta, Sigrid Rausing, said.
• The Serpent in the Grove was named as the winning entry for the Commonwealth prize from the Caribbean on Saturday and published in Granta magazine.
• In “a voice of restraint and quiet authority”, according to the judging committee, it narrates an intense episode in a troubled marriage, and...