Nikon is re-evaluating the top winner of its 2026 Small World in Motion microscopy competition after scientists challenged the authenticity of a video depicting cilia movement in a child with a rare genetic disorder, suggesting the image was generated by artificial intelligence.
The optics manufacturer announced that it is carefully re-reviewing the first-place submission by Dr. Ning Xu, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore, following public complaints from members of the microscopy community. The contested footage is a rendition of abnormal cilia beating within the airways of a child suffering from primary ciliary dyskinesia, a genetic condition affecting respiratory function that can only be revealed by the movement of the cilia, rather than their appearance alone.
Scientists Challenge Dr. Ning Xu Contest Entry
Concerns surfaced on social media shortly after Nikon shared the winning video. Xu is also affiliated with Tsinghua University in China. Researchers reviewing the footage pointed out severe continuity flaws that they argued were inconsistent with natural biological samples.
Edward Phelps, an associate professor at Florida University, noted on LinkedIn that certain purple structures pop in and out of existence and green cilia appear from nowhere without matching known biological dimensions. Robert Hirst of Leicester University added that the scales and details of the movie were quite clear to the community as inconsistent with nature.
Adding technical weight to the complaints, Ian Donovan, an MD/PhD student at UT Southwestern Medical Center, stated that running the video through Google Gemini produced an invisible Google SynthID watermark, indicating that at least a portion of the file was generated or altered by artificial intelligence. Contest rules strictly prohibit the entry of AI-generated videos.
Researcher Defends Work Amid Processing Debate
Defending his work online before his LinkedIn profile was deleted, Xu acknowledged that artificial intelligence played a role in post-production, though he maintained he followed competition guidelines. He explained that it was applied afterwards to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and color structures with similar morphology.
“This video was prepared for a competition celebrating the beauty of microscopy, so we wanted the final presentation to be visually engaging as well as scientifically interesting. We therefore used post-processing to enhance the visual presentation of the regions below the cilia, without making anatomical claims about what those rendered features represent.”
Dr. Ning Xu, via USA Today
Other scientific figures weighed in heavily on the controversy.
“The point of image processing is to help us to see (and quantify!) structures that we otherwise would not be able to resolve, not to hallucinate and make up things in your biological sample that look like other structures. In other words, what you sell as ‘visual presentation’ is generating fake. For the sake of transparency and fairness to the other competitors, you should immediately make the raw data available.”
Valentin Dunsing-Eichenauer, researcher at Der Simulierte Mensch
Shawn Reeves, director of the American Association of Physics Teachers High School Physics Photo Contest, argued that entrants should prioritize integrity over victory, suggesting that the scientific community should have a more cooperative model rather than succumbing to the pressures of competitive superstructures.
Nikon Conducts Formal Re-evaluation Process
Nikon initially stated that it saw no evidence of rule violations, but subsequently updated the winning video’s caption to identify the submission as a rendition
and initiated a formal re-evaluation. According to company statements, Xu is respectfully complying by submitting comprehensive technical documentation that details his microscopy equipment, imaging methods, and processing techniques.
The competition, held annually since 2011, relies on a judging panel consisting of Joe Dragavon of the University of Colorado Boulder and Quinten Geldhof of the Museum of Science in Boston. While the optics company gathers additional verification materials, competitors like Dr. Patrick Hickey—who secured fifth place in the 2026 contest—have emphasized that maintaining strict clarity on digital enhancements remains essential to preserve the fairness and public trust of scientific art.