A new episode of Global Insights on New Lines Magazine’s podcast The Lede takes on the AI accusations that have unsettled literary prizes this year. Host Kwangu Liwewe Agyei is joined by author and 2013 Caine Prize winner Tope Folarin and AI researcher Tuhin Chakrabarty to discuss what the controversies mean for writers, prizes and the software used to catch AI-generated work.

The conversation comes after a year of accusations. Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza, a 2026 Caine Prize shortlistee who went on to win the prize for “The Blue Fighter,” was accused of using AI after the detection tool Pangram flagged the story. Trinidadian writer Jamir Nazir faced similar claims after his story “The Serpent in the Grove” was named a Commonwealth Short Story Prize regional winner, and Haitian author Thélyson Orélien, shortlisted for the Goncourt, has been accused too. All three deny using AI.

Folarin argues that African writers hoping to reach global audiences are pushed toward a narrow set of expected stories, about poverty, migration or Western tales in African settings, because those are what editors in London and New York tend to want. In his words, “Writers have basically been trained to produce certain kinds of work,” and chatbots have been trained on that same work.

Listen to the episode here.