Scandal at Nikon micro-image photo contest: winner suspected of using artificial intelligence

The annual Nikon Small World In Motion competition has been held for 15 years and accepts photographs and videos taken with powerful microscopes.

This year's winner was a short video submitted by Dr. Ning Xu, a researcher from Tsinghua University in China. The author claims the video captures the movement of tiny hair-like structures — cilia — in the airways of a child suffering from a rare disease.

Xu did not respond to the BBC's request for comment but published an online statement denying he violated the competition rules. In response to Nikon's LinkedIn post, Xu did not deny using artificial intelligence to process the image, but stated that he did not violate the competition rules.

"AI was not used to create the experimental video, the cilia themselves, or their movement," he wrote.

Xu's video is artificially brightly colored — this is common practice in microscopy and allowed by the competition rules. Typically, this involves manually coloring the illustration with special dyes.

Xu admitted that AI was used "to highlight and visualize features of reconstructed grayscale images."

However, other scientists noted a number of details that, in their opinion, cast doubt on the video's authenticity.

They claim that some shapes and movements do not correspond to the usual structure and behavior of cells, and the cilia themselves appear too large.

Associate Professor Edward Phelps of the University of Florida, commenting on Nikon's social media post, noted that some structures in the video "appear and disappear," and cilia "emerge from nowhere."

Ian Donovan, a graduate student at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, in turn, stated that the original image apparently contains a characteristic watermark indicating the use of generative AI.

Doubts about the authenticity of the work were also expressed by two former members of the competition jury. Nikon stated that Xu is "fully cooperating" with the ongoing review and has already provided the company with additional technical documentation.

Dr. Patrick Hickey, who placed fifth in the 2026 Small World competition, says that the recognition provided by participating in such a competition is far more significant than the $3,000 cash prize.

"When you spend most of your time in a dark room looking through a microscope, it's very nice to have the opportunity to show your work to other people, to the general public," he said. "It's an interesting combination of science and art: many images that scientists create have quite abstract and artistic qualities."

According to Hickey, if it turns out that the winning video was inappropriately altered using AI, it would be unfair to other participants.

"The competition has a clear set of rules. One of them explicitly states that generative AI cannot be used to create images. Another clear requirement is that the material must be captured using a microscope," he said.

Nikon currently believes that the established procedures have been followed but promises to announce the results of the review soon.

"At this time, we see no indication that any rules have been violated," the company stated.

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