Nikon Microscopy Contest Winner Faces Scrutiny Over AI-Enhanced Video

Last week, Nikon Instruments Inc. announced the winners of its annual Nikon Small World in Motion competition, which honors films captured through microscopes. Ning Xu, an optical engineer at Tsinghua University, claimed first prize for a video depicting abnormal ciliary beating in the airway of a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a rare genetic disorder impairing respiratory function.

Shortly after the announcement, however, several researchers alleged that artificial intelligence had been used to create portions of the video, raising concerns about the undisclosed use of generative tools.

For Robert Hirst, a lead scientist who uses microscopy to diagnose PCD at the University of Leicester, the film immediately raised red flags. “When you start looking at the scales of the movie and some of the details of it, it was quite clear to the community… that some of these features just are not consistent with nature,” he said.

In an email to The Scientist, a Nikon Instruments Inc. spokesperson stated that organizers had reviewed supporting materials provided by Xu. “Based on the information currently available, Nikon can confirm that an AI-assisted enhancement tool was used by the entrant as part of post-processing. Nikon determines this particular use of AI—as a tool for enhancement of microscopy-generated source data, not for image generation from scratch—to be in compliance with the rules set forth by the competition,” the spokesperson said. The organizers subsequently updated the winning entry page to note that AI was used only in post-processing, a position Xu maintains.

Winning Video Comes Under the Microscope

For the video in question, Xu subjected a sample derived from a PCD patient to a novel technique called diffractive super-resolution microscopy using a custom optical microscope, which yielded greyscale data. “Then, we used an unsupervised neural network for post-processing and visualization,” Xu explained. “It [helped] us bring out features in the grayscale data and make the final video more visually engaging.”

The Nikon Instruments Inc. spokesperson added, “The entrant has provided detailed technical documentation outlining the microscopy equipment, imaging methods, and processing techniques used to create the source video. Nikon’s team found the described methods technically legitimate and consistent with established microscopy practices.”

Christophe Leterrier, a neuroscientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research–Aix Marseille University, was not entirely convinced. “The processing has been done in a way that has altered the original image too much,” said Leterrier, a former Nikon Small World jury member and multiple-year awardee.

According to Nikon Instruments Inc., the video showcases a single-cell section at extreme magnification. Leterrier, however, noted that the layer beneath the cilia shows what specialists have identified as small nuclei, mitochondria, and plasma membrane. “You have something very nice and very engaging visually but then it’s absolutely not representing a biological reality,” he said.

Researchers Flag Biological Inconsistencies

After noticing the discrepancies, Hirst contacted Nikon Instruments Inc. and Xu via social media. Despite the ensuing discussion, Hirst remains convinced that AI was used to generate aspects of the video. “The big key here is [they have used an] unsupervised neural network,” he said. According to Hirst, the film misleads viewers into thinking there is one cilium per cell, when in reality there are approximately 200. “It’s created this substratum underneath the cilia which is wrong in scale, wrong in biology, and just looks completely fabricated.”

Melanie White, a cell biologist who uses quantitative imaging at the University of Queensland, echoed Leterrier’s and Hirst’s concerns. “The image itself, although very beautiful, has raised questions about the biological observation that it proposes to display,” she said. “It’s very difficult to understand if what is being shown actually… faithfully represents the biology.”

Xu maintained that he used AI solely for processing, not for generating any part of the movie. “There is an important difference between using AI to create something that was never in the experiment and using AI to process or visualize real experimental data,” he said. “The important question is not simply [if] AI was used; we should ask how it was used.”

Despite the controversy, Xu acknowledged the researchers’ concerns as “understandable.” He added, “AI is developing very fast and people want to know what is real and what has been changed by AI.”

Zooming Out: The Big Picture of AI in Microscopy

For Hirst, the fact that this video represents a disease state is particularly troubling. In PCD patients, ciliary movement is often altered, preventing airway clearance and increasing the risk of recurrent respiratory infections. Researchers rely on deciphering ciliary motion, not just appearance, for diagnosis. “What worries me most of all is that PCD patients will see this video and think, ‘My cilia look like this, and my cells look like this,’ and they just don’t, unfortunately.”

Leterrier emphasized that the community’s issue is not with AI itself, but with its undisclosed use to this extent. “AI is… tremendously useful to our work as microscopists,” he said, but cautioned that boundaries regarding AI use and disclosure of the extent to which tools were applied must be clear.

White agreed that AI tools have valuable applications in microscopy. “[But] there is a difference between using AI to enhance information that was already present or captured versus using AI to interpret and create new information that was not initially there,” she said. “It’s difficult to understand where Nikon is drawing the line around the use of AI.”

Amid increasing pushback, Nikon Instruments Inc. updated the movie caption to describe it as a “rendition.” Asked whether their stance had changed, the spokesperson said, “We are reviewing the AI policy. At this time, we don’t see that any rules were violated, but we are reinvestigating and re-evaluating the entry.”

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