The Vergecast · Thursday, July 16, 2026
PANGRAM's AI detection tool identified a short story, "The Serpent in the Grove," which won a Commonwell Prize, as 100% AI-generated. The author, Samir, claims he used voice-to-text technology, but PANGRAM CEO Max Spira expressed skepticism due to perceived inconsistencies and the tool's high accuracy.
“The big scandal recently around, I think AI detection was there was this commonwell prize. They they awarded a big short story prize to a piece called the Serpent in the Grove. A lot of critics thought it read like AI. PANGRAM assessed it as 100% AI generated. But the author, uh, Samir, he insists he wrote it himself.”
“He he was interviewed by the Atlantic. He said, oh, you know, I use voice to text to actually write this story. And maybe that generated some linguistic oddities.”
“I am very skeptical of his claims. Um, first off, I think just my intuition, it just reads like total AI. It reads like, uh, you ask Chat GPT to write a literary prize winning essay and like, this is what it would say, which is, you know, uh, vapid and has a bunch of empty metaphors.”
“And then PANGRAM says that it's 100% AI. And then when the author claims, hey, it was voice to text, I'm wondering what the counter argument is there.”