Claims extracted
18
sentences that state something as happening or true
Uncertain
11%
2 of 18 hedged
("reportedly", "may", "according to")
Leaning
not political
takes no side on a contested political question
Publisher signals
68/100
BBC News's corrections and
hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.
Outlets on this story
2
Science
Same framing elsewhere
1
articles that frame the event the way this one does
- Published
The winning entry of a prestigious scientific photography competition is being re-evaluated following criticism from other scientists that it was made with AI.
asserted
it → publish → AI
Nikon's annual Small World In Motion contest accepts photos and video taken using powerful microscopes, and has run annually for the last 15 years.
asserted
contest → accept → years
The winner was a short video submitted by Dr Ning Xu, a researcher at Tsinghua University in China, which claims to be footage of tiny, hair-like structures called cilia moving inside the airways of a child with a rare disease.
uncertain
which → submit → disease
Xu did not respond to the BBC's request for comment, but has posted online denying he broke the competition rules.
asserted
he → respond → rules
In a response to a post by Nikon on LinkedIn, external, he did not dispute using AI within the image processing but said he remained within the rules of the contest.
asserted
he → dispute → contest
"AI was not used to generate the experimental movie, the cilia, or their motion," he said.
asserted
he → use → movie
Xu's video is artificially brightly coloured - common in microscopy and permitted in the contest - which is usually done manually using stains and dyes on the sample itself.
asserted
which → permit → sample
He accepted AI was used "to distinguish and visualize features in the reconstructed grayscale images".
But the challenges made by other scientists include claims that the video contains shapes and movements which did not fit with normal cell structures or behaviours, and that the cilia seemed to be too big.
uncertain
cilia → accept → structures
Commenting on Nikon's social media post, Edward Phelps, associate professor at Florida University, observed some of the structures "pop in and out of existence" and the cilia "appear from nowhere".
asserted
cilia → comment → existence
Meanwhile PhD student Ian Donovan from UT Southwestern Medical Centre said the source image appeared to contain a distinctive watermark indicating it had been AI generated.
asserted
it → say → watermark
Additionally, two former competition judges said they also had concerns about whether the image was real.
asserted
image → say → concerns
Nikon said Xu was "respectfully complying" with its investigation and had provided it with additional technical documents.
asserted
Xu → say → documents
Dr Patrick Hickey, who came fifth in the 2026 Small World contest, said the recognition the award represents means more than the $3,000 (£2,250) prize itself.
"If you spend a lot of your time in a dark room looking down a microscope, it's really nice to be able to show people and to show the public," he said.
asserted
he → come → public
"There's an interesting fusion between science and art, and a lot of the images that scientists are making have some very abstract and artistic qualities to them."
asserted
scientists → be → them
Hickey said it would be unfair on other entrants if it turned out the winning video was unfairly altered by AI.
asserted
video → say → AI
"There's a specific set of rules in the contest, and one of them was quite clearly that you couldn't use generative AI to produce things, and the other was obviously that it has to be taken under a microscope," he said.
asserted
he → be → microscope
So far, Nikon is standing by its procedures but it said there would be an update soon.
asserted
it → stand → procedures
"At this time, we don't see that any rules were violated," it said in a statement.
asserted
it → see → statement
The Aporia
