AI-Written Short Story Wins Commonwealth Prize, Human Writers Demand Recount

‘This is the most coherent thing we’ve seen in years,’ judge admits before resigning

LONDON — The literary world is reeling after this year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize was awarded to an entry that, according to furious readers, appears to have been written entirely by an artificial intelligence. The winning story, “Serpent in the Grove,” features a snake that experiences existential dread after losing its smartphone — a plot so resonant that judges reportedly wept.

“We don’t have proof it was AI, but we do know it used the word ‘juxtaposition’ four times in three paragraphs,” said Margaret Hargrove, chair of the judging panel. “That’s a human tell. AI would never be that cliché.” Hargrove resigned shortly after the controversy broke, citing “exhaustion from defending metaphors.”

Accusations surfaced when a Twitter user noticed the story’s prose style perfectly matched a template called “Literary Slop Generator 3000,” available for $9.99 on the dark web. The author, identified only as “R. S. Bickford,” has declined to comment — which many see as suspicious because, as one critic noted, “a real author would never shut up about their process.”

“This isn’t about plagiarism or cheating,” said Kevin, our overworked editor, who has been staring at the story for six hours and still hasn’t finished the first sentence. “It’s about the fact that an AI can produce better prose than 90% of living writers and do it in 30 seconds. That’s not a crisis of authorship — that’s a crisis of talent.”

Kevin then muttered something about how his own grandmother could write better stories on a typewriter, though he later admitted she mostly wrote angry letters to the council about hedge heights.

The Commonwealth Prize, which celebrates stories from member nations, has faced mounting questions about its selection process. Several past winners have quietly admitted to using “slightly improved” language via spell-check or, in one case, asking a parrot to randomly peck at keys and then claiming it was experimental fiction.

“This is an outrage,” said novelist Penelope Cartwright, author of the bestselling “The Symmetry of Regret.” “If an AI can win a prize, then what’s the point of me spending 14 years on a novel about a woman who slowly turns into a lampshade?” She paused. “I mean, it’s metaphorical. But still.”

Meanwhile, the publishing industry has already pivoted: Random House announced a new imprint called “Neural Narratives,” which will exclusively publish AI-generated novels, with human authors allowed only as “inspiration consultants.” The first title, “Zephyr’s Lament: A Cyber-Haiku Collection,” is set for release next month and is expected to win every literary award for the next decade.

As for “Serpent in the Grove,” it has been removed from the prize shortlist pending investigation — but not before becoming the most discussed short story on the internet, outpacing even that one about the guy who finds a secret door in his apartment and decides not to open it. That story, it turns out, was also written by an AI. In 2019.

Ispirato da: Award-winning short story accused of being written by AI, sparking debate about literary quality and authenticity.

Categoria: Costume

Questo articolo è satira generata con l'ausilio di intelligenza artificiale e supervisione editoriale umana. Ogni riferimento a fatti reali è puramente parodico.
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