Indian writer Sharon Aruparayil, one of the three finalists in the eye of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize scandal, was just 18 when she sent a story to the Foundation for the first time. Seven years on, she is the Asia finalist, but finds herself accused of AI plagiarism.
“No AI tools were used at any stage in the writing, editing, or development process of Mehendi Nights,” said Aruparayil in an email to indianexpress.com seeking response to the allegations, adding that she had the paper trail to prove it.
She calls the controversy, which has widened to allege that even a judge’s remarks were AI-generated, “an entertaining witch-hunt, right until you realise that there is nobody backing the writer.”
The controversy
The accusations, which have forced a reckoning in the world of letters, cropped up after the stories of all five regional finalists were published in the prestigious British literary magazine, Granta. Initially, readers took to social media upon spotting “telltale signs of AI” in the story of the 61-year-old Caribbean regional winner Jamir Nazir. Then, the popular AI-detector Pangram–which was also used as evidence during the Shy Girl controversy–backed the allegations, declaring the winning story, The Serpent in the Grove as 100 per cent AI generated.
Many users said they could make out the story had been generated using AI. (X@Nabeel S Qureshi)
Before long, two other finalists found themselves swept in the controversy as readers ran other stories through Pangram, which declared Maltese writer John Edward DeMicoli’s award-winning entry The Bastion’s Shadow 100 per cent AI generated, and 25-year-old Aruparayil’s story, Mehendi Nights–about a group of women who have been forbidden language expressing themselves through a henna artist’s designs–to be partly AI generated.
The same software, however, declared the entries of Lisa-Anne Julien (South Africa) and Holly Ann Miller (Pacific region) to be human written.
‘How am I supposed to trust the reader?’
On the onslaught of condemnation that poured in response to the accusations, Aruparayil says, “The mob believes the machine, and the machine gets to control the narrative of what deserves to be ‘human-written’.”
She said that she had spent years “having my writing sanded down to fit the ‘universal’ reader, and this situation further cements the loss of literature, taste, and perhaps even the ability of genuine critical commentary. How am I supposed to trust in my reader if they cannot even trust themselves?”
Internet sleuths fed all short stories to the AI detector, Pangram. (X@Brendan_Egan_)
“Who will I write for if my audience is hell-bent on feeding my work to the big bad AI machine and ready to crucify me based on what it says? And what about the violation of my rights as a creative whose writing style, that took years of labour in the dark, to suddenly be a prompt away?” she asked.
On the tells that caused her work to be classified as partly AI, she says, “Shorter, snappier sentences showed AI until I put in just three Marathi words and removed one word from the triad in that section to make it 100% human written. I have not invented the rule of thirds, have I?”
Are AI detectors reliable
A 2023 Stanford study found that detectors incorrectly labelled over 61 per cent of essays written by non-native English speakers as AI-generated. Neurodivergent writers, legal writers, and those working in formal registers face similar false positives.
Granta publisher Sigrid Rausing has acknowledged that the magazine had “no control over the selection of the Commonwealth Prize stories” and ran The Serpent in the Grove through Anthropic’s Claude, which concluded the story was “almost certainly not produced unaided by a human.”
The Commonwealth Foundation, in the meantime, has launched a “thorough, transparent review” of the selection process, with director general Razmi Farook observing that requiring unpublished original work to be run through AI checkers “would raise significant concerns surrounding consent and artistic ownership.”
Aruparayil has been previously nominated for the Deodar Prize, the PEN/Dau Prize for Emerging Writers, and the Pushcart Prize 2026. She is currently expanding Mehendi Nights into a debut book. The overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize will be announced at an online ceremony on June 30, 2026. She remains in contention.
Sharon Aruparayil has been accused of AI plagiarism in a short story contest. (Generated using AI) 
Many users said they could make out the story had been generated using AI. (X@Nabeel S Qureshi)
Internet sleuths fed all short stories to the AI detector, Pangram. (X@Brendan_Egan_)
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