PIO accused of using artificial intelligence Caribbean writer wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize

LONDON: A Trinidadian writer originally from Bihar, accused of using artificial intelligence to write his Commonwealth Short Story Prize, has been declared the overall winner.Jamir Nazir (62), from Cunupia, Trinidad, whose grandfather came from Bihar, won the award on Tuesday for his novel “Snake in the Woods”.Within days of him being announced as the regional winner in May, internet sleuths ran his story through AI checkers and announced on social media that it was written by artificial intelligence, with some claiming it was “100% AI generated.” The controversy led to literary magazine Granta announcing it would no longer publish the winners of the annual Commonwealth Short Story Prize on its website.Nazir was announced as the winner by the Commonwealth Foundation, which administers the award.Nazir explains that a chronic health condition made desk typing physically challenging, so he developed his own writing process using speech-to-text tools and an Android phone.His winning story tells the story of a poor Trinidadian farmer struggling to provide for his wife and children who becomes smitten with a woman who works in a rum shack.“Every day as I walked to school I would pass the rum shop where sugarcane workers and laborers gathered. I remember the sounds, the laughter, the arguments and the conversations… Even as a child I felt the hardships endured by families affected by alcohol. ‘Snake in the Wood’ is fiction but it grew out of those early observations,” said Nazir, who won £5,000.