That AI software was used to write 3 out of the 5 winning submissions of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (CSSP) this year is not a question of maybe or a question of but we can never tell for certain that AI was used. Oh, we can tell for certain, alright. For many reasons. But let’s start with the obvious one.
Pangram is the most reliable AI detector in the world—it was studied extensively by the University of Chicago and the University of Maryland and the research showed that it had a remarkable 0.005 false positive rate. If anything, Pangram has the tendency to err on the side of false negatives, that it would sometimes (though rarely still) find that an AI text is human-written.
Besides Pangram, nearly all of the other notable AI detectors (GptZero, Copyleaks, Winston) are in agreement: 2 out of the 5 winning submissions of the 2026 CSSP were written exclusively by AI and 1 substantially so. These are The Serpent in the Grove, The Bastion’s Shadow, and Mehendi Nights respectively.
What’s interesting is that Pangram tested all the winning entries of the CSSP of the last 15 years. No AI use was detected by the software except the 3 mentioned above and, interestingly, the overall winner of 2025. If this isn’t a sign of Pangram’s accuracy, I don’t know what is.
Another reason that we can tell for certain that AI was used is not so obvious: readers. Hundreds of readers all around the world were suspicious simultaneously. It is this international suspicion in the first place that prompted users to put these stories in AI detectors. After all, AI has been around for almost 4 years now, so this level of scrutiny could have been present a year ago, 2 years ago, or even 3 years ago. That this suspicion was present this year says something about the suspects in question.
Any seasoned reader would have noticed the cliched and often terrible metaphors strewn throughout the narratives without care for the context in which they were placed. This isn’t proof exactly but it says something larger about the CSSP, which I’ll get to in a minute.
What’s especially disappointing this year is that, for the first time ever, a Maltese author was recognised and has won the CSSP in the Canada and Europe region with a story that was obviously written by artificial intelligence. Not only has John Edward DeMicoli embarrassed himself and the country, but he also succeeded in embarrassing the CSSP and its judges.
The Commonwealth Foundation’s reaction to the news was also extremely disheartening. It cannot afford, it said, to test the submissions for AI use and it must run on trust. But in the world of AI, it clearly cannot rely on trust, as Pangram has shown us. Razmi Farook, the director general of the Foundation, meandered and floundered considerably when responding to the scandal. She first asked the Claude chatbot whether the stories were indeed AI-written and Claude answered in the affirmative. Then Farook told newspapers that “the prize has an important role in supporting underserved communities and enabling new writers to find a voice.” Her argument is that people who use AI could very well be individuals who are trying to find a voice.
So, in essence, the Commonwealth has no problem rewarding liars and cheats because though the writers themselves didn’t deny it (except DeMicoli—not on newspapers when he was asked to comment, mind you, but on Facebook posts of all places), they broke the very submission regulations that the Commonwealth has set: all works must be the original works of the authors.
What this and how the judges missed all of this while hundreds of readers across the world had their alarm bells ringing tells us about the CSSP is that it routinely, perhaps, rewards formulaic and uninspired writing. It could be why very few of the previous winners ever made it big in the literary world. It could also prove why these awards never quite say something important about writing.
What’s funny is that it took AI for us to realise that prizes like the CSSP are a bit of a sham. If anything, now that all this has bubbled and blown over, it’s maybe high time that we realise that even Malta deserves better than the Commonwealth, that it’s not some big shame and tragedy that no Maltese has ever won it before.
The tragedy is that, as things stand, even in 2026—it’s not a Maltese author who won it either. It’s artificial intelligence and a shameless liar.
It’s likely that AI will be used time and time again and it’s likely that it will continue to be rewarded. But AI is an engine that copies, not crafts. Craft cannot be replicated and it’s instantly recognisable. It’s why, in fact, this scandal erupted in the first place. People could tell something was amiss—hundreds of people on X could tell—and then, ironically, AI gave us the proof: yes, it was me.
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