Kate Middleton's botched photo editing job seen around the world is more than just catnip for tabloids and TikTok conspiracy theorists. It is also the most instructive example of the new ai-infested reality we live in, a maelstrom that forms when distrust and established processes converge and create chaos.
It's hard to know what Middleton, also known as the Princess of Wales and future Queen of England, was thinking when she allegedly edited her own photo so carelessly that it became front-page news in several countries. Shortly after the image was shared publicly, the world's largest news agencies, such as The Associated PressGetty and Reuters, issued retraction alerts, called “takedown notices,” instructing media outlets not to use the image or, if they did, to remove it, citing “handling.”
Fans saw the photo as the royal family's way of indicating that Middleton was doing well after undergoing “planned abdominal surgery” in January; Prior to this, she had been absent from public appearances for months, fueling theories that something was wrong.
Much speculation has centered on because the royal family did this and what they are hiding (which, to be clear, could be absolutely nothing). What's more interesting to me are the structures in place for Middleton and his family to shape his public image and what happens when all that collapses.
Death notices are incredibly rare and unusual. A news service source told me that they could count on one hand the number of deaths recorded in a year. To give you an idea of scale, AP says publishes thousands of stories a day and a million photographs a year. Getty Images covers 160,000 events a year. That a death notice of this magnitude has occurred is a big deal.
Part of the weirdness comes from the fact that news services have established relationships with the organizations that send them images, like Kensington Palace, NASA or the United Nations, for example. AP It is not accepting or spreading images of randos like you and me. The palace knows the editorial rules about what kind of material agencies will accept, which makes what they did even more brazen and a serious breach of protocol.
Images sent to agencies are reviewed by editors for discrepancies and, in this case, the manipulation was detected only after the image had reached the wires (and the instagram account of the Princes of Wales, where the image is still alive). Could this case cause editors to apply greater scrutiny to media presented by Kensington Palace? Many organizations are probably having these conversations.
News services have clear rules about what is acceptable and what is not. AP It allows Minor cropping and color adjustments, but does not allow removal of “red eye” for example. But for everyone else, it's the Wild West. There is no vetting process for doctored images on Instagram, where the doctored image remains posted without notice or disclosure from the palace. As of this writing, a bright red alert appears at the bottom, added by Instagram: “Photo/video tampered with. “The same doctored photo was reviewed by independent fact-checkers in another post.”
It's fair to wonder why the news services didn't pick up on the red flags sooner: the sleeve of Princess Charlotte's sweater disappearing into the cuff is especially striking. But the fact that the news services carried the image in unison has given legitimacy to what might otherwise have circulated online as simply far-fetched theories. In this case, at least, retractions from major media organizations carry more weight than amateur social media breakdowns and viral investigations of multiple TikTok videos.
Over the past century, the British royal family has had an almost unparalleled understanding of the power of shape public perception through images. Middleton's doctored photo (and subsequent death notices) is a mistake of historic proportions. The scandal could be seen as a sign of the royal family's weakening control over public perception. But perhaps it is best understood as a reflection of our current epistemological hell.
On TikTok, Twitter or other platforms, people are free to post whatever they want, without the need for set editorial standards. In the age of generative ai tools (not to mention editing programs like Photoshop, which have been around for years), “reality” is tenuous. Some people see Middleton's poorly retouched family photo and decide she's in critical condition, in the middle of a divorce, or recovering from a BBL; others comment below her telling her to “ignore the negativity” and that she hasn't done anything wrong. When photos can be altered in an instant with plausible deniability, they can be anything the viewer wants them to be.
