Invasion of the literary bots
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Invasion of the literary bots Did AI game the Commonwealth Prize?
Prize-winning stories published by Granta have come under scrutiny. Credit: Granta
Prize-winning stories published by Granta have come under scrutiny. Credit: Granta
aiArtificial intelligenceCommonwealth PrizefictionGrantaLiteratureShort stories
Vincenzo Barney
May 20 2026 - 8:30am 8 mins
Jamir Nazir, Sharon Aruparayil, John Edward DeMicoli, and Holly Ann Miller are all heroes. Don’t misunderstand me too quickly.
On May 15, the Commonwealth Foundation awarded prizes to five emerging writers — four of whom (named above) have so little by way of an online or print papertrail, someone hip to artificial intelligence might wonder if they even exist. Commonwealth has a partnership with the prestigious literary magazine Granta, based in Britain, which promptly published the stories on its website. Just as promptly, a college professor at Wharton, Ethan Mollick, suspected machine prose. Mollick ran one of the incoherently metaphored stories — “The Serpent in the Grove,” by Trinidadian author Jamir Nazir — through an AI-detection software and found that it was a 100% match for AI-generated text.
Granta’s presumably human staff, the magazine says in a statement provided to UnHerd, did not read the stories beyond a copyedit. Though accusations have so far fallen on the shoulders of the unfortunate Nazir, my investigation into the similar schlock of three other finalists and their odd online histories raises discomfiting questions, as well.
For two of the finalists, DeMicoli and Miller, this contest marked practically their first hint of an internet footprint. Of course, as the traceless 20-year-old would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks proved two years ago, young people are abandoning the internet in droves. And we can all agree it’s likely that social media are on their way out. Besides, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize discovers emerging writers, and is it not brave to choose writers so emergent that there is hardly any evidence they exist, such as previous fiction available to Google, or social-media presences before 2025? No, so far this all marks a healthy, understandable civilizational development. But there are other reasons for concern.
How about that two of the pieces were graded 100% AI-generated on AI-detection software Pangram, and a third was graded 92% AI-generated? Is it possible that Commonwealth has spent nearly a week praising the literary value of AI slop, while Granta threw its brand behind the same?
Commonwealth’s website leaves no room for doubt: these finalists were chosen from nearly 8,000 painstakingly sorted entries. The judging process was “robust,” the organization wrote in a statement provided to UnHerd: “Each story is assessed through a thorough process which involves multiple rounds of readers before progressing to the final judging panel. We select our judges for their expertise, passion for the literary community and strong backgrounds in writing.”
More from this authorWhy Cormac McCarthy stopped reading new novels<br>By Vincenzo Barney
Round after round of scrupulous literary appraisal narrowed down to a select few writers of staggering talent. “Here are five writers who share an immense confidence of tone, announcing themselves from the very first line,” says jury chairwoman Louise Doughty, a novelist whose forthcoming memoir, On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love, bears the sort of title that hints at the faux-profound style the jury was keen to sniff out across the globe.
“The style and content of each work may vary,” her statement goes on, “but what all our winning authors have in common is an ability to take their readers by the hand and lead them into a world where the characters are utterly believable, the prose assured, and the author has something important to say.” In other words, according to Doughty, the finalists are all doughty. Among these doughty and diverse voices are “a young woman whose henna art enables silenced women to speak, and a resourceful young sheep farmer.” Bahhh, get me to that sheep farm!
Doughty did not return UnHerd’s request for comment.
Contrary to her claims of utter believability, many non-professional readers found the assurance that these stories were written by humans utterly and immediately unbelievable. It was not a gambol through the sheepfolds that kicked off accusations about AI, but scenes in a room where the air “clung thick as porridge skin. […] No fan, no bulb, no hum — only the thin light slipping between warped boards and the breath of hills holding their heat like a secret.”
That’s a passage from...