Update on the open letter to Nikon Small World in Motion, and join today’s webinar on AI and the future of imaging

A little over a week ago, we asked the FocalPlane community to consider signing an open letter to Nikon Small World in Motion about this year’s first-place video. The video was captioned as abnormal beating of airway cilia from a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), and its submitter later acknowledged that parts had been “rendered”.

Thank you to everyone here who signed and shared it. In just over a week, 469 people from 36 countries and territories added their names: microscopists, cell biologists, imaging scientists, clinicians, colleagues in industry, patients, families and patient organisations!

Last Friday afternoon, Nikon announced that the winning video did not comply with the competition’s rules on generative AI. It has revised the results and will review its rules and evaluation procedures. We are grateful to Nikon and the judging panel for listening and acting on the concerns raised. The letter, with all signatories, has now been delivered to Nikon’s leadership in Japan, the US and Europe. We have also offered the imaging community’s help as Nikon reviews its rules, for example by helping to verify shortlisted entries before winners are announced.

You can read the letter here: https://tinyurl.com/OpenLetterSWiM2026
Or download the PDF: https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1MtnxMlC8pq0D41_YFLN2aG6TM1xUShkp

Join the conversation this afternoon

For many people, competitions like Small World are a first window into what microscopes reveal. As AI tools become part of how we acquire, process, restore and even generate images, the questions this raised reach well beyond one competition, into our own labs, papers and outreach.

Bitesize Bio is hosting a free live panel, Nikon Small World and AI: Where Should Scientific Imaging Draw the Line?, today, 14 October, at 5pm BST (12pm EDT, 6pm CEST). Peter O’Toole (Royal Microscopical Society and University of York) will chair a discussion with Simon Cleary (King’s College London), Florian Jug (Human Technopole) and me on:

• where we draw the line between image enhancement and generated detail;
• what best practice for image integrity looks like;
• where we go next as a community.

There will be plenty of time for questions and comments from the audience, and a recording will be available afterwards. We would love to hear from FocalPlane readers, as so many of you work with these tools every day.

More about the event: https://bitesizebio.com/pr/nikon-small-world/
Register here: https://events.bitesizebio.com/nikon-small-world-and-ai-where/join

This is not the end but the start of a wider conversation about how we capture, process and share what we see under the microscope. We hope you will be part of it.