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Nikon stripped Dr. Ning Xu of the top prize in its 16th annual Small World in Motion contest after an investigation found that his microscopy video violated competition rules. Xu, a researcher at Tsinghua University in China, had submitted footage purportedly showing cilia beating in the airway of a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia, a rare respiratory disorder. Scientists questioned the clip after observing cellular structures with inconsistent sizes and forms that appeared and disappeared in ways they said do not occur in cellular biology. Ian Donovan, a PhD student at UT Southwestern Medical Center, said the apparent source image contained a watermark associated with AI-generated imagery, while two former contest judges also raised concerns. Xu later acknowledged using AI during post-processing to distinguish and visualize features in reconstructed grayscale super-resolution images, while denying that AI generated the video, cilia, or their movement. Nikon awarded the top spot instead to Nguyen Nam Nhat of Vietnam for a video featuring a tiny roundworm and a single-celled organism. Nikon said it will revisit its rules and evaluation procedures for future entries.