Royal photo shows why no-one believes what they see
Where’s Kate? The question has turned in recent months into a hashtaggable conspiracy theory, centreed around the “disappearance” of Catherine, Princess of Wales, following what Kensington Palace has described as abdominal surgery. Last weekend, the world got an answer: Right here, smiling with her three children – except, hold on, there’s something weird going on with their hands.
A photo of Prince William’s happy family, released by the palace presumably to placate the speculators, ended up doing exactly the opposite. The incident holds plenty of lessons about how the age of artificial intelligence has given us reason not to believe what we see.
The picture, admittedly, is all wrong. Look at Kate’s absent wedding ring. Look at Prince Louis’ warped fingers. Look at the misaligned sleeve of Princess Charlotte’s sweater (sorry, jumper).
The conspiracy theorists, already asserting everything from plastic surgery to divorce to death, suddenly had fodder for a whole new round of theorising. Was the lost princess’ face added to the image after the fact, perhaps culled from an old Vogue cover? Was the photo an old one, recoloured and furnished with a fresh background to fool viewers? Most tantalising, was the whole thing a work of artificial intelligence?
The Associated Press, after initially distributing the photo, issued a “kill notification” to participating media outlets – alerting journalists that “at closer inspection it appears the source has manipulated the image”. The source herself only offered an explanation the following day: “Like many amateur photographers,” the princess wrote in a statement, “I do occasionally experiment with editing.” Ah, yes, who among us does not add an extra row of teeth to our child’s mouth before posting on Instagram?
The truth is probably neither as innocent as the royals contend nor as sinister as the public claims. Maybe Catherine herself doesn’t spend her days idly airbrushing on Photoshop, as she suggests, but it seems that in this case someone did. The BBC says analysis of the image’s metadata shows the shot was snapped with a digital camera, then saved twice on the software.
While AI can easily conjure something that never existed at all, it can also alter reality an eensy, weensy bit, so the product is neither totally real nor totally fake. Smooth your skin; add some foliage; remove that random guy with the ugly hat visible over grandma’s shoulder.
People might not always realise they’re relying on AI to pull off these tricks; it feels just like clicking any old button. But when they do rely on it, they invite those hallmarks of manipulation, like messedup hands or incomprehensible text. The trouble these AI tools introduce to society is similar to the problem of so-called fake news. We’re already developing a reflex to question any photo or video we see online.
These changes come as a boon to conspiracy theorists, who love to point out coincidences, inconsistencies and smallbore falsehoods that show up in everyday life as evidence of vast and dastardly plots. Catherine edited a photo and apparently, this is evidence that, next time we see her, we’ll be seeing a body double instead. The only solution would be for everyone to be completely and utterly real - especially people with power and prominence. – Washington Post.