u/cocodudule

So, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is coming under fire cause one of the selected stories seems to have been written partially or entirely by artificial intelligence, according to Pangram, and everyone is tripping over themselves because of it.

I’ve read all sorts of reactions from shock to dismay to disappointment and I found all the reactions very interesting. So, I took the time to read the entire story and here’s my opinion as a Commonwealth Short Story Prize fan girl of 10 years.

You can read my full article here: https://open.substack.com/pub/thedoomscrolldigest/p/why-everyone-is-wrong-about-the-commonwealth

PS. I just read someone here talk about how the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is not prestigious at all because past winners are not famous and don’t even have their own websites or something like that which isn’t true at all. The CSSP doesn’t just award published writers. They award “first time” writers too. So, as long as your story is good, you get the award. Besides, the prestige of a literary award has nothing to do with whether the writer winning it is “famous” or not. It’s not a popularity contest.

Also, a lot of past winners actually have websites and are well known in literary circles. Chanel Sutherland, the winner of the 2025 award, for instance, just released a full length novel on May 12 titled Layaway Child. She’s doing relatively well for Hershel in my opinion.

Edit: Okay, so I see some people talking about how I’m promoting AI writing on a book club. I’m not.

I’m talking about why it happened to begin with. If you’ve submitted a story or poem or anything to a literary prize before, you know they have certain things they look for which doesn’t always reflect the actual quality of your writing to begin with. They want to know if you’re political or cultural enough which I’ve been saying needed to stop even before AI was a thing.

That’s what this article is about not that we must all write with AI.

However, we all want to be right and go, AI writing is the worst without actually addressing the major issue which is that judges are not exactly focused on the quality of a writing to begin with but the theme and the story behind it. The background of the author or something like that.

But if you need me to spell it out, YOU SHOULD NOT WRITE A STORY WITH AI.

Writing is an art form, if AI is doing it for you, you’re not a creative, you’re a prompt engineer.

I hope that clears things up.