Some time ago, I was shocked to discover just before a litfest event that organisers had altered my photograph without my knowledge. They had erased the pottu on my forehead and sharpened my chin. My image had been arbitrarily processed by an AI filter. More shocking still was how, shortly after, an esteemed panellist told the young audience that they freely enjoyed and exploited AI in their own work, and encouraged its use.
That sentiment remains rare among artists of all mediums, but it’s not unheard of. Olga Tokarczuk, who received the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2018, has just shared publicly that she utilises AI in her creative process. This revelation comes at the same time when readers allege that the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region may have been awarded to a completely AI-generated piece. The story, ‘Serpent In The Grove’ was published online in Granta, and the winner is Jamir Nazir. According to detractors, it contains myriad telltale signs of AI usage. Nazir’s LinkedIn profile full of posts about AI, a minimal and very differently-styled publication history and the use of an AI-generated headshot that was run alongside the winning story further support this claim.
AI has distorted the literary and artistic worlds over the last few years in ways that all creative people have been impacted by, with some opting to go with the flow rather than be drowned by the tide. The ethics of AI usage are not especially nuanced, and those who employ such software in order to produce “creative” commodities rarely do so naïvely. But the problem is this: AI usage is not considered deplorable, in considerable part because the makers of such tools have strategically invested in influencing public sentiment about them.
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize case is one indication of how the publishing establishment itself has been breached and further corrupted by the AI menace. Judges passed over original writing, and could not identify digitally-generated text. Or perhaps they even knew, similar to what happened in 2022, when AI imagery produced through Midjourney controversially placed first in the Digital Arts category at the Colorado State Fair. The jury was aware, and did not retract the prize.
Perhaps “Jamir Nazir” will be revealed as a deliberate hoax that exposes how AI slop has become not just ubiquitous but even celebrated. Or the contest participant will own up to having made a mistake that many aspirants make, one which in this global context is forgivable (but not commendable). This is an era when inauthenticity has been normalised, not just because of AI but over the longer arc of how the Internet has functioned in the last decade. Morality has to be read accordingly. How can emerging writers know better when the whole ecosystem privileges yield over sincerity?
The truth is that it is not easy for anyone to resist a shortcut, but neither is it satisfying to do so. Creativity is about so much more than a product or its reception. To not make something with one’s own hands or one’s own mind is to deprive oneself of the sheer pleasure of doing so.