Zimbabwean writer Kundizeza fights allegation of using AI to write Caine Prize award-winning novel

Zimbabwean author Simbarashe Kundizeza, who won the Caine Prize for African Writers, has denied using artificial intelligence to write the short story, The Blue Fighter, following a publication in The Atlantic alleging so.

Mr Kundizeza, who was awarded £10,000 ($13,000) about N14 million on October 6 for the story, vehemently denied the AI accusation in The Atlantic article, ‘Yet Another Literary Prize Winner Seems to Be AI’.

The Atlantic reporter, Vauhini Vara, who wrote the article, said she ran The Blue Fighter through Pangram, an AI-detection software, which found the story was largely AI-generated, except for the epigraph, an unpublished poem by South African writer Vangile Gantso.

But Mr Kundizeza refuted the allegations, saying the story was based on his personal experience and inspired by his family’s financial struggles after his father’s premature resignation from his accounting profession.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I wrote ‘The Blue Fighter’. I did not use generative AI to write it,” Mr Kundizeza said on Wednesday. “It is entirely my own work. This story did not appear out of nowhere; it has a concrete, documented history. Its genesis was during my LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency in Ghana.”

Mr Kundizeza said he had correspondence from 2025 showing feedback with his editor as the story progressed from the first draft to the final draft. He said he asked the editor to “preserve the formatting of an epigraph in the story as originally submitted by Vangile as a courtesy to her”.  

Ms Vara said she read Mr Kundizeza’s previous works, including a story he published in 2021, which she described as tonally different from ‘The Blue Fighter’.

But Mr Kundizeza rebuffed the claim, saying a writer’s creative style cannot be restricted to one tone, stating, “To suggest that a writer cannot write in different styles or genres, or improve his writing substantially after five or more years fundamentally misunderstands the craft of writing.”

Ms Vara said Pangram was rarely wrong, citing research by the same AI software that claims “strong accuracy” in its responses.

The Caine Prize said in a statement that it would investigate the allegation with a “human-centred approach” that does not rely totally on AI.

“When such claims are made, it is our responsibility to look into them. We aim to do this by taking a human-centred approach, ensuring that writers are supported and cared for during the process,” it said.

Caine Prize chair Ellah Wakatama said she was surprised to learn that The Atlantic published an article tainting the award-winner without first launching a human investigation.

In July, Jamir Nazir, a writer from Trinidad, who won the Commonwealth Foundation prize for short story, was accused of using AI in his story, ‘The Serpent in the Grove’.

Similarly, a novel titled ‘C’était Ça Ou Mourir’ (It Was That or Die), written by Canadian-Haitian writer Thélyson Orélien, was delisted from the Goncourt, a prestigious literary prize, following an anonymous claim that it was AI-generated.

A former Black professor at Cambridge University, Jason Arday, died by suicide in August following controversy that he plagiarised his work.