How an AI-Edited Video Won Nikon's Small World in Motion Prize, Then Lost It

What Happened at Nikon's Contest

Nikon Instruments announced the winners of its 16th annual Small World in Motion video microscopy competition on 16 September 2026. The top prize went to Ning Xu, a researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing, for a video showing cilia — the hair-like structures that sweep mucus out of human airways — beating abnormally in a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a rare genetic condition, according to Nikon's official announcement distributed via PR Newswire. Xu used diffractive super-resolution microscopy and a digital micromirror device to record the cilia at 100x magnification while limiting light exposure to the living tissue, the announcement said.

ABC News reported the win carried a US$3,000 prize (about AU$4,300). Within days of the announcement, the video drew scrutiny from microscopy specialists who said parts of the footage did not match known biology.

How Experts Flagged the AI Use

According to ABC News, Florida university associate professor Edward Phelps was among the scientists who publicly questioned the footage, saying cell nuclei and cilia appeared and behaved in ways inconsistent with the known size and structure of airway tissue. Members of the microscopy community wrote an open letter calling for an outside review, warning the video risked giving a misleading picture of PCD, ABC News reported.

Gizmodo reported that some observers also identified a SynthID digital watermark — a marker associated with AI-generated content — embedded in the winning file. The University of Leicester's Robert Hirst, who has studied PCD for two decades, told Gizmodo the structures in the video did not resemble real PCD patient tissue and said the episode had affected patients and support groups following the case.

Nikon's Decision and the Aftermath

Nikon re-evaluated the winning entry and consulted its judging panel before confirming the disqualification on 9 October 2026, adding that the ruling reflected only the entry's eligibility under contest rules and was not a judgment of Xu's professional reputation, scientific contributions or intent, according to Gizmodo and ABC News.

Xu had argued that generative AI was used only to post-process footage — to visualize and distinguish features in a reconstructed grayscale image — and not to invent the raw cilia movement itself, according to Amateur Photographer and Gizmodo. Nikon ultimately found the processing did not meet contest rules.

With Xu disqualified, the original second-place entry — a video by Vietnamese researcher Nguyen Nam Nhat showing a roundworm encountering a single-celled Dileptus organism — was promoted to first place, according to Nikon's announcement and ABC News. A video by Benedikt Pleyer showing jellyfish larvae in water droplets, originally third place, kept its ranking.

A Recurring Debate in Photography Contests

The Nikon case is not the first time a major imaging contest has had to define where photography ends and AI generation begins. In 2023, photographer Boris Eldagsen won the creative category of the Sony World Photography Awards with an AI-generated image titled "The Electrician," part of a series he called "Pseudomnesia," The Register reported.

Eldagsen declined the US$5,000 prize, camera equipment and exhibition trip that came with the award, saying AI-generated images and traditional photography were different forms of media that should not compete in the same contest, according to The Register. The World Photography Organisation removed his entry from the competition and its exhibition after his disclosure became public.

Amateur Photographer noted that AI-related disputes have also touched other competitions, including the 2026 Hasselblad Masters. Nikon said rapid advances in imaging and AI technology had created new challenges and that it plans to revisit its rules and evaluation procedures for future entries, according to Gizmodo.