Nikon revoked Dr. Ning Xu’s first-place award in its 16th Small World in Motion contest after an investigation found that his winning microscope video violated contest rules. The competition accepts movies and time-lapse footage captured through microscopes. Xu’s entry purported to show cilia beating in a child’s airways, but scientists questioned its authenticity after noticing irregular cell shapes and structures that seemed to appear and vanish - behavior inconsistent with cellular biology and commonly associated with generated imagery. A researcher also reported finding what appeared to be an AI watermark in the source image, while two former judges raised concerns about the clip.
Xu acknowledged using AI during post-processing, saying it helped distinguish and visualize features in reconstructed grayscale images. He denied that AI created the video, the cilia, or their movement, and argued that he had not breached the rules. Critics said the anomalies remained unexplained and that sharing the original grayscale footage could have helped resolve doubts. Nikon’s investigation nonetheless concluded that the entry broke its rules, and the prize went to Nguyen Nam Nhat of Vietnam for footage of a tiny roundworm and a single-celled organism. Nikon plans to reconsider its rules and judging procedures, highlighting the challenge of separating permitted image enhancement from AI-generated content in scientific photography contests.
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