A Zimbabwean author, who spent months writing a short story inspired by his family’s financial struggles, found himself having to prove that he was its author after an artificial intelligence (AI) detection tool suggested otherwise.
Simbarashe Kundizeza, whose short story The Blue Fighter won the prestigious £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing on October 6, has been cleared of allegations of using generative AI following a month-long investigation.
Just five days after Kundizeza won the award, journalist Vauhini Vara published an article in The Atlantic, claiming that AI detection tool Pangram had flagged almost his entire story as AI-generated.
Interestingly, the only part of the story that the software considered human-written was an excerpt from another author’s poem.
Kundizeza categorically denied the allegations.
How did Kundizeza prove his innocence?
The organisers hired an independent digital forensic investigator to examine the metadata of Kundizeza’s drafts.
Investigators found four separate Word documents accounting for up to 27 hours of writing and editing.
Kundizeza had started working on the story in April 2025 and completed it two months later.
The organisers also interviewed the judges and the publisher that originally published his story.
“AI detection tools alone are not a reliable basis for determining authorship,” the Caine Prize said while announcing its findings on Wednesday.
The controversy also sparked a debate over whether AI detectors disproportionately flag works by African writers.
Despite clearing Kundizeza, the organisers announced that publishers and shortlisted authors would be required to submit AI-use declarations starting next year.
