Winner of Nikon microscopy photo contest faces criticism over AI usage

By Jack Guy, CNN

(CNN) — The organizers of a highly regarded scientific photography contest are reviewing this year’s winning entry following criticism over the use of AI.

Nikon has announced that it’s “carefully re-reviewing the information” provided by Ning Xu, whose short video of intricate cell movement won the annual Small World In Motion competition in September.

At the time, Xu was a researcher at Tsinghua University in China. He’s since joined National University of Singapore as a research fellow, according to Nikon.

In a post on LinkedIn on Saturday, Nikon said that, “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.”

The video captures the abnormal beating of airway cilia — hairlike structures that protrude from cells within the human body — in a child living with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a rare genetic disorder, Nikon said at the time the winner was revealed.

In mid-September, Nikon announced that the video, which was created using an advanced microscopic imaging tool, had won the 16th annual Nikon Small World in Motion competition.

Last week, the competition posted the video on LinkedIn, where it received a number of critical comments from other users.

Edward Phelps, an associate professor at the University of Florida, said there were “many serious problems with this video.” He said that some of the biological structures shown in the footage do not behave as expected. “The microscopy community deserves an explanation from Nikon,” Phelps added.

Ian Donovan, a PhD student at UT Southwestern Medical Center, wrote that the video has “an embedded SynthID watermark identifying synthetic/AI-generated content.”

Xu replied to some of the criticism on Nikon’s LinkedIn post, saying that “AI was not used to generate the experimental movie, the cilia, or their motion.”

“It was applied afterwards to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and color structures with similar morphology,” he added.

“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,” he said.

“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 Xu. “Both can have a place, as long as we are clear about which is which.”

CNN has contacted competition organizers for comment.

CNN has tried contacting Xu for comment directly and via the Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore.

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