Nikon says the video that originally won first place in its Small World in Motion contest “did not comply with contest rules regarding generative AI.” bbc reports that Dr. Ning Xu’s original first-place video claimed to show “tiny hair-like structures called cilia moving in the airways of a child with the respiratory disease PCD.” Nikon said last week that it was reviewing the video following online skepticism about its authenticity.
In a comment on LinkedIn, Dr. Xu admitted to using AI for the video: “An unsupervised neural network method was subsequently used for AI-assisted post-processing to distinguish and visualize features in the grayscale reconstructed images of the super-resolution optical images.”
Dr. Xu’s video has been disqualified and appears to have been removed from Nikon’s website. A video by Nguyen Nam Nhat now takes first place, according to the contest’s updated rankings. Following the incident, Nikon says it plans to “review the rules and judging procedures for future competition entries.” He also noted in his statement about the contest that the decision to disqualify Dr. Xu’s video “should not be construed as a judgment on the participant’s professional reputation, scientific contributions, or intent.”
