Nikon Replaces Small World in Motion Winner After AI-Use Investigation

Nikon has replaced the winner of its Small World in Motion competition after an investigation found that the original submission did not comply with the contest’s regulations. The new winner is Nguyen Nam Nhat from Vietnam, whose video captures tiny roundworms and single-celled organisms in motion.

Last month, we featured the winning video by Ning Shu of Tsinghua University in China. The entry showed tiny cilia beating in the airways of a child with a rare respiratory disease. However, concerns were later raised about the use of AI while creating the video. Nikon launched an investigation and concluded that the submission did not comply with the competition’s rules.

According to BBC reporting, some researchers noticed structural anomalies in the video. Cell features appeared and disappeared in ways that are not seen in real cell biology, while some people identified what appeared to be AI watermarks embedded in the source files.

The entrant said AI was used to “distinguish and visualize features in reconstructed grayscale images.” However, they denied that AI was used “to generate experimental films, cilia, or their movements.”

How Nikon’s Small World in Motion competition works

Established in 2011, the Nikon Small World in Motion Competition grew out of the company’s Small World Photomicrography Competition, which began in 1974. Both competitions aim to “showcase the beauty and complexity of what can be seen through a light microscope.”

The photography competition focuses on still images, while Small World in Motion highlights video, time-lapse photography, and other moving images created with microscopes. The competitions reflect advances in microscopy and imaging technology that make it possible to record complex biological processes in motion.

2026 Nikon Small World in Motion winners

Following the disqualification, the other winners moved up in the rankings:

• Second place: Benedict Preyer of Bavaria, Germany, for a video of a jellyfish larva floating in a drop of water.
• Third place: Andrew Moore of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States, for a video showing synchronized cell division in adjacent cells.
• Fourth place: Patrick Hickey of Hypha Research Ltd. in Edinburgh, Scotland, for a video documenting mitochondria and chloroplast dynamics in Turtle Vine leaf cells.
• Fifth place: Igor Adameiko, for a video of a small, colorful sea slug, Saias kiktarobabai, moving through its environment.