Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.yahoo.com
The company has stripped an entry to its Small World In Motion competition of its first place prize.
Photo and video competitions have had to deal with fakes and forgeries since their invention, a task that’s become increasingly difficult in the age of generative AI. Many competitions have had to deal with revelations that entries – sometimes even winning ones – were faked or enhanced by AI. Now, it’s happened with one sponsored by Nikon.
The company has disqualified the video that won first place in its Small World in Motion competition, stating it “did not comply with the competition rules regarding generative AI.” That rule is relatively simple: “AI generated videos are not permitted and Sponsor holds the right to request the original video for verification.”
The video in question supposedly showed “abnormal beating of airway cilia in a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a rare genetic disorder affecting respiratory function,” and the original press release announcing it as the winner had several paragraphs describing the importance of the imagery and how it was captured.
The statement doesn’t say is what role generative AI played in the video’s creation
Nikon’s statement says the decision came “after thoroughly re-evaluating the video and supporting materials and consulting with members of our judging panel.” It also clarifies that the decision “is based solely on the submitted video’s eligibility under the rules outlined for this competition” and “should not be interpreted as a judgment of the entrant’s professional reputation, scientific contributions, or intent.”
What the statement doesn’t say is what role generative AI played in the video’s creation; whether it was fully synthetic, or if it was used to edit something that was once a real image. You can still see it in news coverage of the competition and it looks otherworldly, but, to me, that’s the case for authentic microscopy videos, too. The BBC says the winner “acknowledged using AI,” and reports that other scientists raised the alarm about the video, with one expert in PCD saying that the cells in the video “look nothing like those from PCD patients.”
The new winning video. “A tiny roundworm and a single-celled Dileptus explore their microscopic world.”
Nguyen Nam OME | Chu Se, Gia Lai, Vietnam | Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) | 40X (Objective Lens Magnification)
Nguyen Nam Nhat / Nikon Small World
The company says the incident shows it needs to re-evaluate its rules and procedures moving forward, though as AI tools and people’s familiarity with them and willingness to use them advance, it seems likely that this will continue to happen, despite a growing market of tools designed to identify AI-generated or edited content. The reality is that many of the existing tools are, essentially, guessing, or rely on watermarks embedded by tools made by companies acting in good faith. Someone looking to enter a doctored or generated video into a competition would be able to bypass those relatively easily.
In light of the incident, Nikon has changed the rankings of the Small World In Motion competition, which awards a prize of $3000 for first place. That spot has been awarded to the former second place winner, Nguyen Nam Nhat, who submitted a video of “a tiny roundworm and a single-celled Dileptus” moving around. Second place now belongs to Benedikt Pleyer’s video of jellyfish larvae, and third place goes to Dr. Andrew Moore for their video of “synchronized cell division in neighboring cells.” You can view all the winners on the Nikon Small World website.
About the Author: Mitchell started taking pictures at 10 and hasn’t stopped since. It’s been a wide-ranging adventure, spanning a wide variety of genres and locales, and occasionally dipping into fascinations with video and filmmaking. They honed their technical knowledge doing documentation, programing and QA, writing for The Verge, and just generally messing around on the computer to see what breaks.
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