Nikon is re-reviewing the first-place winner of a recent videography contest following community complaints about the potential use of artificial intelligence in the submission.
In a LinkedIn comment shared Sept. 26, Nikon said it is "carefully re-reviewing" the first-place video in this year's Small World In Motion Competition, submitted by Dr. Ning Xu, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore. The microscopic video is a "rendition of abnormal beating of airway cilia from a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a genetic disorder affecting respiratory function" and AI was used to assist in the video's post-processing, according to the Nikon website.
Cilia are tiny, hair-like structures found throughout the body's airways.
PCD, a rare genetic condition, can only be revealed by the movement of the cilia, rather than their appearance alone, as outlined in the description of Xu's video on the Nikon website. Accurate diagnosis of PCD relies on "dynamic imaging with highly specialized systems," like the one developed by Xu and his team, the website states.
In its LinkedIn comment, Nikon said Xu is "respectfully complying" with the re-review, providing detailed technological documentation that outlines his microscopy equipment, imaging methods and processing techniques to create the video. Nikon said it planned to update the Small World community the week of Sept. 28.
Held annually since 2011, Nikon's Small World in Motion Competition accepts movies or digital time-lapse photography taken through a microscope.
Nikon nor Xu responded to USA TODAY when contacted Oct. 1.
Why is Nikon re-reviewing the first-place video submission?
After Xu's winning video was shared on the Small World in Motion Competition website and Nikon Small World LinkedIn account about two weeks ago, members of the microscopy community began to share concern the video contained AI elements.
As outlined in the official contest rules for the competition, AI-generated videos are not permitted for entry.
In a comment on Nikon Small World's LinkedIn post, Valentin Dunsing-Eichenauer, a researcher at Der Simulierte Mensch, a research company based in Berlin, said Xu's video is a misuse of AI in bioimage post-processing.
"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," Dunsing-Eichenauer commented. "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."
Shawn Reeves is the founder of Energy Teachers, a nonprofit that provides resources to educators and students about energy production, and director of the American Association of Physics Teachers High School Physics Photo Contest, a position he has held since 2023.
Reeves said in a comment on Nikon Small World's LinkedIn post that Xu should have retracted his entry, advice he would have given to any of the entrants of the High School Physics Photo Contest, "not to allow the desire to win to force them to cheat."
"The purpose of scientific work is not to win competitions, or maybe it is to some people. Part of the blame lies in the structures and superstructures of competition, when we should have a more cooperative model," Reeves said in his comment.
USA TODAY reached out to Der Simulierte Mensch to connect with Dunsing-Eichenauer and Reeves on Oct. 1.
Who were the judges of Nikon's Small World Motion Competition?
As outlined on the Nikon website, this year's judging panel was made up of:
- Joe Dragavon, Director of BioFrontiers Institute's Advanced Light Microscopy Core and Director of Core Facilities and Shared Instrumentation at the University of Colorado Boulder
- Quinten Geldhof, Technical designer at the Museum of Science in Boston
- Corey S. Powell, Award-winning science writer and editor
- Meredith Sagolla, Director of the Center for Advanced Light Microscopy and Electron Microscopy at Genentech
USA TODAY reached out to each of the judges about the winning submission on Oct. 1.
First-place winner defends use of AI
Xu took to the comment section of the Nikon Small World LinkedIn post to answer questions directly from concerned users and provide context as to why AI was used to assist in the post-production of the video.
"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" Xu wrote in a comment. "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."
More specifically, AI-assisted post-processing was used to distinguish and visualize features in grayscale images from the super-resolution optical imaging, Xu wrote in another comment. The colors in the video are false and "do not correspond to fluorescence channels identifying specific cells or organelles," he added.
Xu added that the regions beneath the cilia were "rendered" to "improve the visual presentation, rather than to provide an anatomical reconstruction of the underlying cells or organelles.""A more detailed description of the optical system and quantitative analysis of the ciliary motion are currently being prepared for publication, and we hope to make these available soon," Xu concluded.
As of Oct. 1, a disclaimer about the use of AI-assisted post-processing was noted under the video on the Nikon website.
Greta Cross is a national trending reporter at USA TODAY. Story idea? Email her at gcross@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nikon re-reviews video contest winner after complaints about AI use
