Major Philippine literary contest to require writing drafts in AI era

The F. Sionil Jose Young Writers Award’s policy comes amid “The Serpent in the Grove” controversy.

For decades, literary competitions judged only the finished manuscript. Now, a major Philippine literary contest is asking writers to prove how they wrote it.

The 2026 F. Sionil Jose Young Writers Award has introduced the country’s most explicit AI policy yet: organizers have the right to request drafts, revision histories, research notes, or “other evidence of authorship.” The contest also explicitly prohibits the use of “built-in or external AI tools for ideation, outlining, drafting, writing, or editing.”

“Entries for which satisfactory evidence of predominantly human authorship cannot be provided including those suspected of undisclosed generative AI authorship, may be disqualified,” the competition said in its announcement on July 13.

The policy marks a significant shift in how Philippine literary competitions may verify authorship in the AI era.

In recent memory, major contests such as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Gawad Bienvenido Lumbera—whose submission periods ended on June 30 and July 15, respectively—have not published similarly explicit AI-authorship verification procedures.

Other competitions have addressed AI more narrowly. The Philippine Space Agency’s Space Law Essay Writing Contest, whose deadline is July 22, states that “submissions found to be generated using AI shall be disqualified.” At the campus level, De La Salle University’s Annual Literary and Visual Arts Awards—which accepted entries until April 5 and recognized winners on June 13—required contestants to declare that “generative AI was not used to create any of the submitted work.”

F. Sionil Jose Young Writers Award’s stricter policy comes on the heels of the controversy surrounding Trinidadian writer Jamir Nazir, whose “The Serpent in the Grove” became the subject of AI allegations.

Nazir became a regional winner in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in May, with literary magazine Granta publishing the winning stories online.

After readers encountered his work, online critics accused the story of showing “obvious markers” of AI-generated writing, including “not x, but y” constructions and “rule of three” patterns. They also flagged “nonsensical” lines as AI hallucinations, like: “Sun on galvanise is a cruel instrument”; “She had the kind of walking that made benches become men”; and “Marsha lived two bends down … [she was] big in the way of women who never apologise to furniture.”

Some readers also ran the story through AI-detection software, including Pangram, though the reliability of such tools has since been questioned. The controversy later led Granta to withdraw from its long-running agreement to publish the Commonwealth winners.

Before the June 30 awarding, the Commonwealth Foundation said it conducted a review of all regional winners’ creative processes. It held “detailed discussions” with writers and examined “working drafts, time-stamped documents and notes” related to the development of their stories.

“After a thorough consultation with our judges and careful consideration of all available information, we are satisfied that AI was not used to write the winning stories,” it said.

Nazir ultimately won the overall prize. He received an additional £2,500 (₱206,000)—on top of the £2,500 he won from the regional selection.

Unlike the Commonwealth Foundation, which reviewed authorship concerns only after allegations surfaced, the F. Sionil Jose Young Writers Award has placed the verification process in its competition rules from the outset.

The award—established by the children of the late National Artist for Literature in 2015—is open to short stories in English and Filipino.

Deadline is on Aug. 15. Winners in each category will receive ₱25,000 for first prize, ₱15,000 for second prize, and ₱10,000 for third prize. Full contest guidelines can be found in their post.