El País reports Pangram attributed 99% of an award-winning novel to AI

According to El País, Pangram attributed 99% of “Donde el agua trabaja,” by David Silva Roja, to AI. The novel won the Almadía–Ventosa Arrufat International Short Novel Prize, whose rules prohibited AI use. The author denies the accusation, and the publisher suspended events while reviewing the case. The book was selected from 2,204 manuscripts from 22 countries, received 20,000 euros and is also being translated.

Xataka explains that Pangram classifies passages and estimates how much they resemble machine-generated text, without reconstructing how they were written. The company says Pangram 4 detects 99.66% of AI text and incorrectly flags 0.0041% of human text, but those rates are measured on web text rather than novels. The site also cites limitations: Nature found that the system labeled 41% of human essays substantially modified by AI as human, while simple changes can alter its verdict. The percentage therefore does not show who did what or eliminate the risk of false positives causing reputational harm.