Organizers of a highly regarded scientific photography competition are reviewing this year’s winning entry following criticism over the use of AI. Nikon has announced that it is “carefully reviewing the information” provided by Ning Xu, whose short video of intricate cell movement won the annual Small World In Motion contest in September. At the time, Xu was a researcher at Tsinghua University in China. He has since joined the National University of Singapore as a researcher, according to Nikon. In a post on LinkedIn on Saturday, Nikon said that “Xu respectfully complies and has provided detailed technical documentation describing the microscopy equipment, imaging methods and processing techniques used to create the source video.” The video captures the abnormal beating of airway cilia (hair-like 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, created using an advanced microscopic imaging tool, had won the 16th annual Nikon Small World in Motion competition. Last week, the contest posted the video on LinkedIn, where it received several 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 some of the biological structures shown in the images do not behave as expected. “The microscopy community deserves an explanation from Nikon,” Phelps added. Ian Donovan, a doctoral student at UT Southwestern Medical Center, wrote that the video has “an embedded SynthID watermark that identifies synthetic/AI-generated content.” Xu responded to some of the criticism in Nikon’s LinkedIn post, saying that “AI was not used to generate the experimental film, the cilia, or their movement.” “It was subsequently applied to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and color structures with similar morphology,” he added. “A more detailed description of the optical system and a quantitative analysis of ciliary movement are currently being prepared for publication, and we hope they will be 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,” Xu added. “Both can have a place, as long as we are clear about which is which.” CNN has contacted the competition organizers for comment. CNN has attempted to contact Xu for comment directly and through Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore.
