The ‘Granta’ AI Fiction Scandal Changes Everything - The Atlantic

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Updated at 10:37 a.m. ET on May 21, 2026<br>The scandal started the usual way. Readers noticed AI-like prose in a written work and took to ridiculing it online. Some ran the writing through an AI-detection platform that labeled it entirely AI-generated. The institutions involved in its publication scrambled to figure out what had happened.<br>The details in this particular scandal have to do with an all-but-unknown Trinidadian writer named Jamir Nazir. His story “The Serpent in the Grove” was among five regional winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The award came with 2,500 British pounds and publication on the website of Granta, a prestigious British literary magazine. Earlier this week, readers started gleefully tearing Nazir’s work apart online, posting screenshots showing canned stylistic patterns and a proliferation of weird metaphors: “Her hair is midnight rain; her laugh is bright as zinc,” read one line.<br>“A major milestone for AI, at any rate,” one person deadpanned. Subsequent sleuthing only reinforced the early suspicions: The photo of Nazir on the prize website was almost too slick-looking; his LinkedIn page was filled with florid posts about AI’s potential to change the world.<br>Before long, commenters were pointing fingers at two other winners of this year’s Commonwealth Prize: Malta’s John Edward DeMicoli and India’s Sharon Aruparayil. People posted screenshots from the same AI-detection platform; it flagged both stories as likely to have been generated using AI, DeMicoli’s in full and Aruparayil’s in part.<br>DeMicoli’s online footprint was minimal before his win and the subsequent scandal. But Aruparayil works in communications and, like Nazir, has posted about AI—at times using language that only a chatbot would appreciate. “I envision a future where decision-making is a seamless synergy between human expertise and artificial intelligence,” reads a blog post published with her byline.<br>Read: How AI is creeping into The New York Times<br>I reached out to all three authors using contact information I’d found online; only Aruparayil responded. She told me over email that she hadn’t used any AI tools at any point “in the writing, editing, or development process” for her prize-winning work. “The story has had only human hands and eyes on it, and I refuse to use AI in my writing,” Aruparayil said. She added that she had saved several time-stamped drafts, evidence of her active role in writing and editing the story, but she declined to share them. When I asked about her AI-promoting blog post, she said that she hadn’t written it. Rather, she said, an Emirati research foundation had attributed the post to her based on a project she’d done for it. The post has since been taken down. A deputy director at the foundation acknowledged removing it at Aruparayil’s request, but added, “To the best of our knowledge, Sharon prepared this work during her time with the Foundation.”<br>Much of the coverage of this latest scandal has focused on the possibility that two prestigious organizations unknowingly published AI-generated work. But that part shouldn’t be shocking. AI has also shown up in outlets including The New York Times and in books published by major houses. What’s different, this time, is what happened next.<br>In previous instances of suspected AI use, the authors quickly conceded that artificial intelligence had been involved. I wrote in March about a “Modern Love” column in the Times suspected of including AI material. Its author, Kate Gilgan, acknowledged to me that she’d turned to at least five AI products for “inspiration and guidance and correction”—in short, as a “collaborative editor.” Later, the Times introduced AI guidance banning freelancers from using AI in that way. Around the same time, the author of the horror novel Shy Girl—which readers called out for various AI tells after its U.K. publication—said that an editor she’d hired to help with an earlier, self-published version of the novel had used AI. Hachette, the novel’s publisher, discontinued the novel’s U.K. edition and canceled publication in the United States.<br>The current controversy is already playing out differently. Other than Aruparayil, none of the authors involved has spoken publicly this time. Razmi Farook, the director general of the Commonwealth Foundation, released a circumspect statement this week noting that “all shortlisted writers have personally stated that no AI was used and, upon further consultation, the Foundation has confirmed this.”<br>Yesterday morning, Farook clarified in a call what this meant: The foundation had asked the winners to confirm again that they hadn’t used AI, and the writers had obliged. Farook said that the Commonwealth Foundation hadn’t used AI detectors, because they’re fallible and because doing so would involve inputting authors’ work into an AI product without their permission. Farook said that she...