Huge row over microscope photograph contest winner's 'AI fake' video

A contestant of a microscopy competition has been condemned by the scientific community for allegedly using AI to create his winning video. 

Dr Ning Xu, a researcher at Tsinghua University in China at the time, faced shattering backlash after he was accused of using AI to alter his entry that won this year's annual Nikon Small World in Motion contest. 

The annual contest celebrates videos and pictures of subjects too tiny to see with the naked eye, normally taken with the use of a powerful microscope. It has a prize of $3,000 (£2,250).

Dr Xu won the top prize for a short film in which he purportedly showed minuscule hair-like structures, called cilia, moving in the airways of a child suffering with the rare inherited disease, primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). 

Questions, however, quickly arose after Nikon announced the result on social media in September – as scientists started to probe the video's authenticity.

Some critics challenged the 'unnatural' movement of the cilia, which were tinted bright green, while others queried the size of the hair-like structures.

Ian Donovan, a doctoral student at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Texas, argued that one version of the film seemingly featured a Google SynthID watermark – used to mark content made or edited with Google AI. 

While Edward Phelps, an associate professor at the University of Florida, claimed some of the cilia appeared to 'pop in and out of existence'.

Dr Ning Xu faced shattering backlash after he was accused of using AI to alter his entry for the annual Nikon Small World in Motion contest (pictured)

Dr Xu jumped to deny that AI had been used to create the scientific footage itself, but confessed to using it later to produce the bright green colour. 

Writing online, he said AI had not created 'the experimental movie, the cilia, or their motion'. 

Yet admitted it had been used aesthetically to change the colour from black and white, saying: '[AI] was applied afterwards to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and colour structures with similar morphology.'

'For me, the important distinction is between using an image to make a scientific claim and using visualization to communicate the beauty of scientific data,' added Dr Xu. 'Both can have a place, as long as we are clear about which is which.' 

Nikon has since said it has launched an investigation, saying it is 'carefully re-reviewing the information' given by the researcher.

In a LinkedIn post on Saturday, Nikon said: 'Xu is respectfully complying and has provided detailed technical documentation outlining the microscopy equipment, imaging methods, and processing techniques used to create the source video.'

It is not uncommon for scientific images or videos to be coloured so that they are easier to see. 

The judges of the competition will be challenged with determining whether AI was used to emphasise details already present in the original video, or whether it was used to create elements that weren't already there.

The competition, which is in its 16th leg, bans the use of AI-generated videos. However permits its use in particular points of the processing stage.

In a statement, Nikon said 'at this time, we don't see that any rules were violated.'

Dr Patrick Hickey, who placed fifth in the 2026 Small World contest, said the honour and recognition that comes with the award means more than the $3,000 (£2,250) prize itself.

'If you spend a lot of your time in a dark room looking down a microscope, it's really nice to be able to show people and to show the public,' he said.

'There's an interesting fusion between science and art, and a lot of the images that scientists are making have some very abstract and artistic qualities to them.'

Dr Hickey said it would be unfair on other entrants if it emerged the winning video was unfairly altered by AI.

'There's a specific set of rules in the contest, and one of them was quite clearly that you couldn't use generative AI to produce things, and the other was obviously that it has to be taken under a microscope,' he said.

Dr Xu's entry was named: Rendition of abnormal beating of airway cilia from a child with Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD), a genetic disorder affecting respiratory function. AI-assisted in post-processing. 

Tsinghua University has been contacted for comment. Attempts were made to contact Dr Xu.