An independent forensic investigation commissioned by the Caine Prize for African Writing has found no evidence that Simbarashe Kundizeza’s £10,000-winning short story, “The Blue Fighter,” was generated by artificial intelligence, per bbc.com.
The inquiry was launched following allegations published in an American magazine by journalist Vauhini Vara, who cited AI-detection software claiming the text was entirely machine-written.
In response to the claims, the prize’s board of trustees appointed an independent cyber security and digital forensic investigator to examine the author’s drafting metadata and version history.
Chair of the board Ellah Wakatama confirmed that the forensic examination revealed no indicators of generative artificial intelligence use, firmly upholding Kundizeza as the legitimate winner.
Kundizeza had previously rejected the accusations, stating that the work was entirely his own and noting that it was inspired by a poem he encountered during a writing residency in Ghana. The controversy has since sparked wider debates within literary circles regarding the reliability of automated text-detection tools and the potential for false accusations directed against writers from the Global South.
•Featured image: Simbarashe Kundizeza/Caine Prize