Zimbabwean author denies using AI to write award-winning story

What the report says

Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza has denied claims that artificial intelligence was used to create his award-winning short story, “The Blue Fighter,” after an article in The Atlantic said AI-detection software had marked the work as fully AI-generated. The story won this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing, and the allegation triggered debate online about plagiarism, AI use, and scrutiny of African writers.

According to BBC Africa, Kundizeza responded on X by insisting he wrote the story himself and saying he could provide a documented account of how it developed. He has also described the piece as drawing inspiration from a poem about fish tanks heard at an event in Ghana, alongside fictionalized details from his own family history in Zimbabwe during the early 2000s.

Caine Prize chair Ellah Wakatama told the BBC she was shocked the magazine published before a fuller investigation, and said the prize is now reviewing material including draft documentation from the author. She also said submissions are not routinely screened for AI and warned against treating detection tools as final proof. The row comes amid wider disputes this year over AI allegations in literary awards, including contests involving writers from Trinidad and Tobago and Canada-Haiti. The BBC report notes that researchers and the article’s author have both acknowledged AI detectors can be wrong, especially with non-native English writing.