  JWST is producing high-quality rest-frame optical and UV spectra of faint
galaxies at $z>4$ for the first time, challenging models of galaxy and stellar
populations. One galaxy recently observed at $z=5.943$, GS9422, has nebular
line and UV continuum emission that appears to require a high ionizing photon
production efficiency. This has been explained with an exotic stellar initial
mass function (IMF), 10-30x more top-heavy than a Salpeter IMF (Cameron et al.
2023). Here we suggest an alternate explanation to this exotic IMF. We use a
new flexible neural net emulator for CLOUDY, Cue, to infer the shape of the
ionizing spectrum directly from the observed emission line fluxes. By
describing the ionizing spectrum with a piece-wise power-law, Cue is agnostic
to the source of the ionizing photons. Cue finds that the ionizing radiation
from GS9422 can be approximated by a double power law characterized by
$\frac{Q_\mathrm{HeII}}{Q_\mathrm{H}} = -1.5$, which can be interpreted as a
combination of young, metal-poor stars and a low-luminosity active galactic
nucleus (AGN) with $F_{\nu} \propto \lambda ^ {2}$ in a 65%/35% ratio. This
suggests a significantly lower nebular continuum contribution to the observed
UV flux (24%) than a top-heavy IMF ($\gtrsim80$%), and hence, necessitates a
damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorber (DLA) to explain the continuum turnover
bluewards of $\sim1400$ Angstrom. While current data cannot rule out either
scenario, given the immense impact the proposed top-heavy IMF would have on
models of galaxy formation, it is important to propose viable alternative
explanations and to further investigate the nature of peculiar high-z nebular
emitters.
