Kate Middleton’s Missing Photo Editing Job: Ignoring the Faint Legacy of the Birth of a Princess, an Example of The AI-flecked New Reality
Kate Middleton’s botched photo editing job seen around the world is more than just catnip for tabloids and TikTok conspiracy theorists. It’s also the most instructive illustration of the AI-flecked new reality we live in, a maelstrom formed when distrust and established processes converge and create chaos.
The photograph that kicked off the current controversy had a different metadata than the Mother’s Day one. The explanation for the shoddy Photoshop job as given publicly by the official X account belonging to Kensington Palace is that Middleton did it herself.
Middleton’s job is to be seen in public, and she’s been gone for months. In the absence of more information, speculation has been rife regarding William and his rumored infidelity. So that made the Mother’s Day photograph important to get right: it was, at minimum, proof Middleton was not in a coma.
Remember, this is a family for whom image matters more than most. Middleton, a beautiful commoner who became a princess, has vanished. The more danger the Windsors are in, the longer she remains out of sight. And should she surface with a story other than a surgery with an arduous recovery, the Firm may face an existential threat. Images become reality when you are in the business of being symbols.
A Rare and Unusual Kill Notice During the Run-Theoretical Running of the Grand Unified Museum of Science and Technology, and How to Get It Right
Kill notices are incredibly rare and unusual. The wire service source told me they could see the number of kills issued in a year. To give you a sense of scale, AP says it publishes thousands of stories a day and a million pictures a year. Getty Images covers 160,000 events annually. That a kill notice of this magnitude took place is a big deal.
Part of the rarity comes from the fact that wire services have established relationships with the organizations that submit images to them, like Kensington Palace or NASA or the United Nations, for example. AP is not accepting and disseminating images from randos like you and me. The palace knows editorial rules for material agencies, which makes what they did even more brazen and a violation of protocol.
Wire services have clear rules about what’s acceptable and what’s not — AP allows minor cropping and color adjustments but disallows the removal of “red eye,” for example. But for everyone else, it’s the Wild West. There is no vetting process for manipulated images on the photo sharing website. There is a bright red alert at the bottom of the picture. The same altered photo was reviewed by fact-checkers.
Zooming in and examining the royal photo closely, it’s easy to see edges on the children’s sweaters and other inconsistent details, particularly in the area around Princess Charlotte’s hand, that appear to be manipulated via photo-editing software. The zip on her jacket leads to nowhere, and portions of Middleton’s hair look unnatural.
“My guess is that the errors are coming from the stamp tool,” says WIRED design director Alyssa Walker. It pulls another part of the image together. When used haphazardly, this type of content stamp tool could easily introduce errors to an image, like the edges of clothing appearing to be cut off at random with poorly defined outlines.
It does not seem odd to me that a person whose job is being beautiful in public might use any tool available to make the shot perfect. It’s difficult to get a photo of three children where no one is making a weird face or has their eyes closed. (I am the oldest of five; our family Christmas photos, where the goal was to get one shot where all of us looked good at the same time, were an ordeal.) I’m pretty sure the best shot of everyone was used in order to create this image. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, the public knows where to look for manipulated images, which is a problem for the palace.
It’s easy to make speculation in the public. A neck-up video would probably show Middleton thanking everyone and saying she would like to rest. That hasn’t happened. One of the pictures we got was deemed Unauthorized by TMZ and was not run by the tabloids in the UK. The other shows Middleton and William facing away from the camera. The image was released after the photoshopped one. It hasn’t helped.
Let us consider the recent events with that context in mind. The timeline of events is roughly this: in late December, two outlets proclaimed that Prince William and his wife, Kate Middleton, would make a trip to Italy. Then, in January, this trip was abruptly canceled, as Middleton was recovering from surgery. Regardless of what happened, it was not apparent if the princess couldn’t take the trip. The last time a picture of Kate was visible on the Palace’s social media pages was December 29th, part of a year-in-review slideshow.
The royal family has established that official reporting about it is untrustworthy over the course of decades. Christopher Hitchens considered The Royals to be a serious expose about how the family hid their German connections during World War II. The very funny Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret (or Ma’am Darling in the UK) shows how shocking stories of Princess Margaret’s bad behavior served to make her sister, the Queen, look more respectable. In Spare, Prince Harry discusses at length the reluctance of the royal press office to defend his wife — and though he has his own motivations, many of his claims ring true. (For instance, King Charles III’s office will leak unflattering stories about other members of the family.) There is a monarchy-shaking event called Princess Diana.
Tech reporters wonder if this is the end of shared reality. With due respect, boys, there is a misunderstanding about how we got here. The royal family is a pack of nitwits, but also provide a very good example of media manipulation.
Royal watchers know perfectly well that the Firm engages in media manipulation; for instance, as royals reporter Ellie Hall makes clear, royal press offices very rarely go on the record. The royal family stories usually have phrasies like this reporter understands or this news outlet can confirm. For any seasoned watcher, that means that the press office is involved.