Small World in Motion: Winner Disqualified After AI Confession

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Small World in Motion: Winner Disqualified After AI Confession.

The first-place winner of the Nikon 'Small World in Motion' competition is no longer Dr. Ning Xu as of October 9, 2026: Nikon disqualified the winning video because generative AI used in post-processing violated the competition rules. According to the updated rankings, the new first-place winner is a video by Nguyen Nam Nhat.

The original winning video by Dr. Xu reportedly showed, according to the BBC, tiny hair-like structures — so-called cilia — moving in the airways of a child with the respiratory condition PCD. That is precisely what makes the case delicate: anyone who post-processes a video of disease-relevant structures with AI and fails to disclose it undermines trust in such scientific documentation.

Dr. Xu himself acknowledged the AI use on LinkedIn:

An unsupervised neural-network method was subsequently used for AI-assisted post-processing to distinguish and visualize f...

How Online Skepticism Triggered the Turn

According to The Verge, Nikon had announced the week before the disqualification that it was reviewing the video due to skepticism online — users had questioned its authenticity. Dr. Xu's own admission on LinkedIn is likely to have accelerated Nikon's decision.

What Nikon Is Tackling Now

Nikon announced that it intends to revise the rules and judging procedures for future competitions. The disqualified video appears to have since been removed from Nikon's website. In a statement on the competition, Nikon noted, according to The Verge, that the disqualification should "not be understood as a judgment on the professional reputation, scientific contributions, or intent of the participant."

For the competition, this means concretely: the title goes to Nguyen Nam Nhat, the rules will be revised — and a clear first place no longer protects against scrutiny if the community online grows suspicious.