PIO Caribbean writer accused of using AI wins Commonwealth short story prize

LONDON: A Trinidadian writer with ancestral roots in Bihar accused of using AI to write his entry to the Commonwealth short story prize has been declared the overall winner.Jamir Nazir (62) from Cunupia, Trinidad, whose grandfather was from Bihar, on Tuesday won for his story “The Serpent in the Grove”.Within days of him being declared a regional winner in May, internet sleuths had put his story through AI checkers and declared on social media it was written by AI, with some claiming it was “100% AI generated”. The controversy led to literary magazine Granta announcing it would no longer publish the winning entries of the annual Commonwealth short story prize on its website.The Commonwealth Foundation, which administers the prize, announced Nazir’s win.Nazir explained that chronic health conditions had made desk typing physically challenging, so he has developed his own writing process using speech-to text tools and his Android phone.His winning story is about an impoverished Trinidadian farmer struggling to support his wife and child who becomes obsessed with a woman who works in a rum shack.“Each day, I walked to school past rum shops where cane workers and labourers gathered. I remember the voices, the laughter, the arguments and conversations … Even as a child, I sensed the hardship carried by families affected by alcohol. ‘The Serpent in the Grove’ is fiction, but it grew from those early observations,” Nazir, who has won £5,000, said.