There was a lot of talk that a recent picture of Kate Middleton and her kids was made by AI, so the Duchess of Cambridge had to address the issue.
Middleton said in a statement, “Like many amateur photographers, I do sometimes try out editing.” In case the family picture we shared yesterday caused any confusion, I’d like to say sorry.
There’s something off about the picture. It’s like four people are smiling and looking right into your soul. The hands, though. It’s the right number of hands—eight hands for four people—but they all look little off. Kate’s arms are hidden behind two kids, but we can see her hands. One hand is a little fuzzy, and the other one doesn’t have a wedding ring on it. Charlotte’s wrist looks like it’s been mixed with another wrist that’s missing, and her cardigan arm looks like it’s been mixed with another gray cardigan that isn’t in the picture. And Louis is just making a weird motion with one hand. It has less to do with cutting and more to do with kids being weird. But the picture gets creepier as you look at it longer.
Fans of the Royal Family have been guessing about why the princess hasn’t been seen in public lately, which makes things even stranger. In January, the Royal Family said that Middleton was going to have surgery in London on her abdomen. She spent a few weeks in the hospital and then was sent home, but the family said she was still healing but doing well. But Middleton has been back home for more than a month and still hasn’t gone out in public. That’s not typical for a member of the Royal Family.
I get it because I had Instagram when I was in high school. From VSCO to Facetune to Canva, there’s a lot of temptation out there. It’s so easy to just erase a zit that’s in the way, but you could get caught. Ladies: They’re just like us! This was before AI and Photoshop, so you had to use that to get rid of the background in a picture. Back then, Royal analysts and fans would have probably brought up the oddities of the kids’ fingers in the picture or the fact that there’s a spot near Charlotte’s elbow that looks like a content-aware fill went wrong. But we wouldn’t have made up a story that the whole picture was a fake psyop made by Buckingham Palace.
There are more and more questionable reasons for the rumors that Middleton isn’t there. Some people joked that Middleton had something to do with that Willy Wonka pop-up that went wrong, which was reported by Page Six but was not based on any evidence. Some people joked in a tweet that Middleton might be Banksy. The internet went crazy when official Royal Family accounts shared the picture of Kate and her kids that looked fishy. The Associated Press put out a “kill order,” which means it told news outlets to take down the picture because the argument over it got out of hand.
It’s not clear what tools the princess used to edit the picture. For example, Facetune might be able to get rid of flaws or change the color of the picture, but it won’t add a fake sleeve under Charlotte’s arm. Some editing tools, like the content-aware fill or clone brush in Photoshop, may use parts of the picture to make something that wasn’t there before. But those aren’t the picture editing tools people use to get ready for Instagram—that’s what you use to get rid of that random guy in the background of your beach photo.
People from Britain, like Piers Morgan, have spoken out, which makes me wonder why the Royal Family won’t just release the original photo to stop the rumors.
As images made by AI become more common, we’re losing touch with reality. These days, any picture can be fake, so how do we know what’s real? Something that lets you know someone is lying is if they have an odd number of fingers or if they wear earrings on one ear but not the other (though that could just be a fashion choice). But these ways of finding things aren’t as effective as AI gets better and more common. A report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that deepfake pictures about elections have been going up by an average of 130% every month on X (Twitter). The rumors about a lost princess won’t change the outcome of an election, but this shows that it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between fact and fiction.
Also read: At Mwc, Google Does Ai Things to Android
Because Middleton herself said the picture she posted was changed, it’s a good thing that people were so suspicious of it. Being in a family picture is always awkward, but at least ours probably won’t cause a worldwide discussion.
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