Destroyer of Words?

I’ve been a huge beneficiary of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. It’s one of the first prizes I entered as a novice writer, and it remains one of my favourites. Long odds these days because there are so many entries, but it’s free to enter, and international in scope, although not all writers in all countries or languages are eligible. I’ve entered six times: Won the regional prize for Caribbean twice (2012 and 2022), twice made the 200 longlist, and twice my story did not make the longlist cut. I was a judge in 2021. I was a Commonwealth writer in residence (although not physically present in London) in 2014, and have had two non fiction pieces published by their online platform, Adda.

Put another way, I have ticked that box stating that my submissions are my original work.

So I am disturbed by the recent allegations that Artificial Intelligence (AI) was used to create some of the regional winning stories for 2026. The evidence, such as it is, seems strongest for the Caribbean regional winner, Jamir Nazir, for his story The Serpent in the Grove. The Commonwealth Foundation is standing with its judges and the winning writers and has put out a statement here. Link to CF statement

Other personal context: Two of my novels, Dog-Heart and Gone to Drift, have been ‘scraped’ by AI programmes, that is to say, used without permission from me or my publishers to train AI. My own writing style has already informed these Large Language Models (LLMs), which might one day determine that my actual writing was produced by them and therefore is not my creative work. Read that again.

I’m trying to work out how I feel about all this, wanting to be fair to all concerned.

1. When I read a piece of writing, I connect with the writer’s mind. This person – I am using that word precisely – has dreamed up a situation, a set of characters, a sequence of events that hopefully reveals an original vantage point to a reader. The chosen language can distance or transport me. I might suspend belief and go along with the writer as trees move and stones talk, or I might dismiss such flights of fancy and stop reading. At its core, whatever my reaction to a piece of written work, I am engaging with human creativity. AI demolishes that assumption, that value, that contract, and severs the connection between writer and reader.

2. We writers all use a variety of tools; most of us have had some instruction whether in the occasional workshop or a four-year Master’s programme, we’ve read some books on writing and constantly read widely ourselves. We use a dictionary, a thesaurus, style guides, spell check, we have first readers, editors, we allude to the work of other writers. We encounter stylistic devices and adopt them. But these are all different in degree and kind from instructing a computer programme to devise a prize-winning story for XYZ competition, featuring a boy lost in the forest or whatever, written in the style of ABC writer.

3. Earlier, as I was sitting in my garden, turning this piece around in my head, glancing at the Gleaner newspaper, I saw a story about an athlete who was going to run at something called the Enhanced Games. I read it, and it seemed that this was a track and field contest where at least some kinds of performance enhancing drugs would be allowed. And it struck me that this was analogous to the AI dilemma – we restrict drug use in athletic competition because we want results to be real, we want winning to emerge from the talent and effort of the athletes, not merely the best drugs. Similarly, we want our writers to be human, for their creative struggle to be real.

4. For me, one of the most disturbing aspects of the allegations against the writers has been the revelation of the various stylistic approaches that are now considered indicative of AI use. I have used every single one of them in six published novels, 11 short stories, 360 newspaper columns, 56 Substacks, 12 magazine articles, two pieces in academic journals, five children’s stories, one children’s book (well, booklet, really), and five anthologies including my own writing. Are we really going to let machines tell us how to write?

5. For those who say, what if the AI does a good job and the prose is wonderful? Oh pooh, I say, it is still un-human, un-creative, un-fair. Teef my work to compete with me on the same, often hidden footing? No sah. If it is a machine’s work, are we going to give the machine the prize money?

6. As for the Commonwealth Foundation’s decision, I understand their dilemma, although not completely. They have selected independent judges for their experience and independence – the Foundation can’t now overturn their decision. Yes, they will have to come up with something stronger to enforce a ‘no AI’ rule for the competition, if indeed it is to continue. If it is even possible to detect as AI improves, as it undoubtedly will. The judges get the stories blind, so they are not privy to some of the issues which should have invited query from the Foundation itself, such as problematic social media posts, pictures and profiles. And I don’t understand their reluctance to ask the writers – maybe even the entire longlist – to provide date stamped evidence of the authorship of their work. Perhaps they did, but that is not what their statement says.

7. I’m not going to make any comment on the quality of any of the regional winning stories. I don’t critique the work of other writers, unless part of an official editing panel and then not in public. I am all too aware of how differently even those with respected literary credentials respond to a piece of writing.

8. The title of this Substack, perhaps too click-bait-y, comes from atom bomb creator J. Robert Oppenheimer, when he said, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” (Interestingly, according to the AI which now mediates my internet searches, the line is from the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu scripture.) Maybe our willingness to walk down any technological road no matter how risky, just because we can, will bring about the degradation of that most human of attributes, language itself, by whoever builds and operates the best machine.

Another story: Ansel Adams’ photograph Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico was colourised and exhibited by the Danziger Gallery without permission or any indication it was produced by AI. A statement from the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust said Danziger Gallery “exploited Ansel’s name, reputation, and his most iconic image, while failing to identify any human artist responsible for its creation.”

On the Ansel Adams Trust's statement

A human artist. Who or what creates a piece of creative work matters.