{"id":916854,"date":"2026-10-01T18:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T18:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/916854\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T18:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T18:00:09","slug":"winner-of-nikon-microscopy-photo-contest-faces-criticism-over-ai-usage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/916854\/","title":{"rendered":"Winner of Nikon microscopy photo contest faces criticism over AI usage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The organizers of a highly regarded scientific photography contest<\/a> are reviewing this year\u2019s winning entry following criticism over the use of AI.\n <\/p>\n

\n Nikon has announced that it\u2019s \u201ccarefully re-reviewing the information\u201d provided by Ning Xu, whose short video of intricate cell movement won the annual Small World In Motion competition in September.\n <\/p>\n

\n At the time, Xu was a researcher at Tsinghua University in China. He\u2019s since joined National University of Singapore as a research fellow, according to Nikon<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a post<\/a> on LinkedIn on Saturday, Nikon said that, \u201cXu is respectfully complying and has provided detailed technical documentation outlining the microscopy equipment, imaging methods, and processing techniques used to create the source video.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The video captures the abnormal beating of airway cilia \u2014 hairlike structures that protrude from cells within the human body \u2014 in a child living with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a rare genetic disorder, Nikon said at the time the winner was revealed.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n Last week, the competition posted the video on LinkedIn, where it received a number of critical comments from other users.\n <\/p>\n

\n Edward Phelps, an associate professor at the University of Florida, said there were \u201cmany serious problems with this video.\u201d He said that some of the biological structures shown in the footage do not behave as expected. \u201cThe microscopy community deserves an explanation from Nikon,\u201d Phelps added.\n <\/p>\n

\n Ian Donovan, a PhD student at UT Southwestern Medical Center, wrote that the video has \u201can embedded SynthID watermark identifying synthetic\/AI-generated content.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Xu replied to some of the criticism on Nikon\u2019s LinkedIn post, saying that \u201cAI was not used to generate the experimental movie, the cilia, or their motion.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt was applied afterwards to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and color structures with similar morphology,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cA 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,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cFor me, the important distinction is between using an image to make a scientific claim and using visualization to communicate the beauty of scientific data,\u201d added Xu. \u201cBoth can have a place, as long as we are clear about which is which.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN has contacted competition organizers for comment.\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN has tried contacting Xu for comment directly and via the Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The organizers of a highly regarded scientific photography contest are reviewing this year\u2019s winning entry following criticism over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-916854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}