Caine Prize finds no evidence of AI use in Zimbabwean’s £10,000-winning story

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The Caine Prize for African Writing has found no evidence of AI use in Simbarashe Kundizeza’s winning story, ‘The Blue Fighter’, upholding his £10,000 priz Read More:…

The Caine Prize for African Writing has found no evidence of generative AI use in Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza’s award-winning story, ‘The Blue Fighter’, confirming that it was written by a human.

The award body also upheld Kundizeza’s £10,000 ($13,000) prize, confirming him as the winner of the 2026 edition.

According to a report by the BBC on Wednesday, the accusation follows an article published in a US magazine, ‘The Atlantic,’ titled, “Yet Another Literary Prizewinner Seems to Be AI,” written by Vauhini Vara.

“The prestigious Caine Prize, announced last week, went to a story with many red flags,” the article stated in the header.

She alleged that Kundizeza’s latest story was AI-generated, citing results from an AI-detection tool, Pangram.

However, in a tweet posted via the award body’s X handle on Wednesday, the Chair of the Caine Prize’s board of trustees, Ellah Wakatama, noted that Kundizeza stands as the 2026 award winner after internal review.

She said the organisation adopted a “human-centred” approach in investigating the allegations, which she said were examined “carefully and fairly.”

Wakatama added that the organisation conducted interviews with the Zimbabwean writer, the 2026 judging panel, and the Shallow Tales review where the story was first published, alongside “independent and expert-led metadata analysis of drafts written by the author.”

The board’s chairman stated, “The Board of Trustees of the Caine Prize for African Writing has concluded its internal review of The Blue Fighter, and we confirm that the award stands, and Simbarashe Stein Kundizeza is the 2026 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. The review opened on the 11th of October 2026 after an article written by Vauhini Vara and published in The Atlantic suggested that the winning story may have been written using generative AI.

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