NIKON DISQUALIFIES MICROSCOPY VIDEO WINNER OVER AI USE

Nikon has disqualified the original winner of its Small World in Motion competition after concluding the entry breached rules on generative AI. The video, submitted by Ning Xu of Tsinghua University in China, had depicted cilia, described as tiny hair-like structures, moving in the airway of a child with the respiratory condition PCD. Nikon said it launched a review following scepticism raised online about the video's authenticity, and the entry has now been removed from its website. Nguyen Nam Nhat of Vietnam, whose video shows a roundworm and a single-celled organism, has been named the new winner. Nikon said the disqualification "should not be interpreted as a judgment of the entrant's professional reputation, scientific contributions, or intent."

According to a BBC report, some researchers had raised concerns that Xu's video showed structural abnormalities and cell features that appeared and disappeared in ways inconsistent with actual cellular biology, while others said they had identified apparent AI watermarks within the source files. Xu said on LinkedIn that an "unsupervised neural-network method" had been used for AI-assisted post-processing "to distinguish and visualize features in the reconstructed grayscale images," but denied using AI "to generate the experimental movie, the cilia, or their motion." The competition, running since 2011 as a video spinoff of Nikon's photomicrography contest dating to 1974, aims to showcase microscopic imagery.

With Xu's disqualification, other placings moved up. Benedikt Pleyer of Bavaria, Germany, now holds second place with a video of jellyfish larvae in water droplets, followed by Andrew Moore of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in third, Patrick Hickey of Hypha Research Ltd in Edinburgh in fourth, and Igor Adameyko in fifth with footage of a sea slug. Nikon said it plans to "revisit rules and evaluation procedures for future competition entries" following the case.