Zimbabwean author Kundizeza denies using AI to write Caine Prize-winning story

Mixed · 2Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza has denied using artificial intelligence to write his short story "The Blue Fighter", which won the 2026 Caine Prize for African Writing, worth £10,000 ($13,000). 1 2 Left · 1The story was announced as the winner on 6 October; five days later The Atlantic published an article by the author and journalist Vauhini Vara headlined "Yet Another Literary prize winner Seems to Be AI". 2 Mixed · 2Vara said the AI-detection software Pangram, which is itself AI-powered, judged the story to be almost entirely AI-generated; the exception was an epigraph attributed to an unpublished poem by the South African writer Vangile Gantsho. 2 1

Centre · 1Vara also cited stylistic features she said are common in AI writing, such as "not x, but y" sentence constructions and a glut of metaphors, and said a 2021 story by Kundizeza, which Pangram rated as human-written, was tonally very different. 1 Mixed · 2In a statement on X, Kundizeza wrote: "For the avoidance of doubt, I wrote 'The Blue Fighter'. I did not use generative AI to write it. It is entirely my own work." He said a writer can work in different styles or improve substantially over five or more years, and that he has a "concrete, documented history" of the story's inspiration, which he set out chronologically. 2 1 Centre · 1The day after winning, Kundizeza told the BBC the story was inspired by a poem Gantsho read in Ghana last year about her father's obsession with building fish tanks, combined with fictionalised details of his own life around 2002, when Zimbabwe's economic troubles began. 1

Mixed · 2The Caine Prize said it is reviewing the allegations with a "human-centred approach". Chair Ellah Wakatama said Kundizeza would send documentation of his drafts as part of an internal investigation, and that the prize was in conversation with the judges and with The Shallow Tales Review, which first published the story in 2025. 2 1 Mixed · 2Wakatama told the BBC's Front Row she was not against AI per se but against detection software being used "as a final arbiter", said The Atlantic had called the winner a cheater without investigating properly, and said Pangram was "not yet tested" and she did not want black writers' work to be its "testing ground". She said Caine Prize entries, all previously published, are not checked for AI and writers vouch that their work is original. 2 1 Mixed · 2Vara said Pangram's internal research shows its assessments are rarely wrong and cited a Free University of Brussels paper that found no errors on English writing by non-native speakers, and a peer-reviewed study finding "strong accuracy". She conceded no detector is 100% accurate and that there is relatively little third-party research. The Brussels study says such tools should be an "initial flag for further investigation". Research has also found that detectors can wrongly flag human writing. 1 2

Centre · 1The article caused an uproar on social media. Nigerian publisher Wale Lawal called it "crazy, racist and wildly unethical", Zimbabwean writer Joe Ruzvidzo said he stood by Kundizeza, and publisher Modupe Daramola said AI allegations disproportionately target Black and African writers. 1 Mixed · 2The case follows other disputes this year: Jamir Nazir won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in July despite social media claims of AI markers, and Thélyson Orélien's novel was removed from the Goncourt longlist after an anonymous online allegation, which he denies. 2 1