Did a Chatbot Write a Prize-Winning Story? Does It Matter?

Did a Chatbot Write a Prize-Winning Story? If the possibility that one or more of the winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize was A.I.-generated chills us, it may be because of what it reveals about human writing. In early May, the Commonwealth Foundation announced the five regional winners for its influential Short Story Prize, which recognizes unpublished short fiction. One of the awardees, a Trinidadian writer named Jamir Nazir, was accused of A.I.-assisted cheating by a broad array of social-media users who seized upon his story's synthetic tics, glitchy metaphors, and general unreadability. "Maybe it was a name; maybe rain took a shape and decided to keep it.")