Nikon Disqualifies Winning Microscopy Video Over AI Rules

Nikon has disqualified Ning Xu’s winning video from its Small World in Motion microscopy competition, saying it violated rules governing generative artificial intelligence, and awarded the top prize to Nguyen Nam Nhat of Vietnam. The contest organizer said it reevaluated Xu’s video and supporting materials and consulted members of the judging panel before determining the entry was ineligible. Nikon changed the rankings accordingly. Nhat’s winning video shows a roundworm and a single-celled organism. Xu, an optical engineering researcher, has said he used an AI model during postprocessing to distinguish and visualize features in reconstructed grayscale images. He maintained that the original images were not generated by AI and that he believed he had followed the contest rules. The exact extent of the video’s alteration was not established in the material made public. The entry had shown hairlike cilia in airway tissue associated with primary ciliary dyskinesia, a respiratory condition. Scientists raised concerns about apparent biological anomalies in the video.