Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, had to intervene after wild speculation that an AI-generated photo of her and her children went viral. According to Kate Middleton’s statement, “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” she also apologized by saying, “I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”
Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months.
Wishing everyone a Happy Mother's Day. C
📸 The Prince of Wales, 2024 pic.twitter.com/6DywGBpLLQ
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 10, 2024
There’s something off about the photo; it could be that four strangers are beaming down at you from above. Next, though, we have the hands. It’s the right number of hands—eight for four people—but they all seem mismatched. While Kate Middleton’s hands are visible, they are concealed by two kids; also, one of her hands is slightly hazy, while the other does not bear a wedding band.
The sleeve of Charlotte’s cardigan seems to blend into a different grey cardigan that isn’t visible in the snap, and her wrist appears to blend with another missing wrist. Oh, and Louis is just using one hand for some strange action that is more related to children being children than editing. Although the picture becomes more unsettling the more you examine it.
Fans of the royal family have been wondering why the princess has been so quiet as of late, adding fuel to the fire of suspicion. Kate Middleton underwent planned stomach surgery in London in January, as disclosed by the Royal Family. She was discharged a few weeks later, and the family later indicated that she was still healing but doing well. However, Middleton was at home for over a month without making any public appearances, which is unusual for members of the Royal Family.
We get that It’s tempting to use one of the many available tools such as VSCO, Facetune, or Canva to hide an unsightly pimple, but you face the risk of getting exposed. A princess is simply like any other person. Back when Photoshop was still the go-to tool for erasing image backgrounds, AI seemed like something out of a science fiction novel.
Royal observers and followers from that era would have undoubtedly noticed something off about the children’s fingers in the photograph or noticed that Charlotte’s elbow has what appears to be a content-aware fill gone wrong. But we wouldn’t have thought to make up a story about how the whole thing was a psyop staged by the British government.
Speculation regarding Kate Middleton’s whereabouts has led to more and more questionable explanations. Some people made fun of the fact that Kate Middleton was involved in the Willy Wonka pop-up that went down the hill, while Page Six claimed that the princess had a Brazilian butt lift. It was even joked about in a tweet that Kate could be “Banksy”. The internet went wild after the official Royal Family accounts shared a picture of Kate Middleton and her children, which looked dubious. The Associated Press issued a “kill order,” specifically requesting that news outlets remove the photo due to the excessive conversation surrounding it.
The princess Kate Middleton may have used a picture editing application like Facetune to fix imperfections or adjust the lighting, but it won’t give Charlotte a phantom sleeve under her elbow. A clone brush or Photoshop’s content-aware fill are two examples of retouching tools that could potentially employ photo elements to add something that wasn’t there before. But those aren’t the photo editing tools people use to get themselves Instagram-ready; they’re ideal for things like removing that weird person from a beach photo.
A number of British celebrities, including Piers Morgan, have spoken out, causing many to wonder why the royal family isn’t simply sharing the original picture of Kate Middleton to put an end to the rumours.
Reality is slipping through our fingers as AI-powered picture generation becomes common. How do we tell reality from fiction in this day and age when every picture could be fake? For example, if someone has an unusually large or small number of fingers or if they only have earrings in one ear (which could just be a fashion choice, but you’d never know), those are red flags. However, these identification approaches are becoming less reliable as AI becomes smarter and more widely utilized.
On average, deepfake images related to elections have been increasing by 130% monthly on X (Twitter), according to a recent study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The fact that people can’t tell reality from fiction is shown by this incident, even if election-related speculation about the missing princess won’t change anything. Middleton acknowledged that the photo was altered, so it’s good that people were doubtful about it. No family photo is ever going to be perfect anyway.
