Meet the winner of Nikon's Small World in Motion video contest

The winner of Nikon's 2026 Small World in Motion video contest, Dr. Ning Xu, was disqualified after Nikon determined that the winning video did not comply with the competition rules regarding generative AI. Dr. Xu's video, which originally secured the first-place prize, depicted tiny hair-like structures, known as cilia, fluttering in the airways of a child with a rare genetic disease called primary ciliary dyskinesia. Concerns were initially raised by other scientists who observed biologically unusual aspects in the video, and a doctoral student later found a SynthID watermark—a technique used by AI companies to mark generated content—within the footage. Following the disqualification, Nguyen Nam Nhat was named the new first-place winner for a video featuring a tiny roundworm and a single-celled *Dileptus*. Nikon acknowledged that the rapid evolution of imaging and artificial intelligence creates new challenges and stated its intention to revisit the rules and evaluation procedures for future competitions.