Tiny image sparks big backlash in Nikon photo contest

What the report says

A Nikon scientific photography contest is facing scrutiny after the winning entry in its annual Small World In Motion competition was questioned by other scientists over whether artificial intelligence was used in a way that violated the rules. BBC World News reports that the winning video was submitted by Dr Ning Xu, a researcher at Tsinghua University in China, and is described as showing cilia moving in the airways of a child with a rare disease.

According to the BBC, Xu denied breaking the contest rules in a post on LinkedIn, saying AI was not used to create the original movie, the cilia, or their motion. He said AI was used only to help distinguish and visualize features in reconstructed grayscale images. Nikon said Xu was cooperating with its review and had supplied technical documents. The company said it did not currently believe any rules had been broken, but that an update would follow.

The report says the criticism came from scientists who argued the video looked inconsistent with normal cell behavior, with some saying features appeared to come and go or that the cilia seemed too large. One PhD student said the image may have included an AI watermark, and two former judges also raised concerns. Nikon’s contest, now in its 15th year, awards work made with microscopes and is valued by researchers for combining science and art.