Photo agencies are refusing to publish a portrait of Kate Middleton with her children over concerns it was manipulated

girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to News@lemmy.world – 240 points – Photo agencies are refusing to publish a portrait of Kate Middleton with her children over concerns it was manipulated
businessinsider.com

The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse all released kill notifications to media outlets over the photo — released by Kensington Palace on Sunday — announcing that they would no longer be distributing the image.

The AP wrote, "it appears that the source has manipulated the image." AFP cited an "editorial issue," while Reuters said the photo was withdrawn after a "post-publication review."

Following its release, social media was abuzz with sleuths questioning whether the photo was photoshopped or AI-generated. Many were focused on the cuff of Princess Charlotte's pink cardigan, which appears to disappear in the photo.

Other users pointed out that Middleton was not wearing her wedding ring.

"no rings, kids all have their fingers crossed, weird blurring on charlotte's cuffs, leaves on the trees despite it being early mach - i'm sorry but they're just asking for us to go full katespiracy at this point," one user on X wrote.

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Okay, I thought the conspiracy theories were kinda silly at first. But now, even though I don't care about Kate Middleton or any of the royal family, I gotta admit I'm kinda curious now.

There is nothing to the conspiracy theories, she's had abdominal surgery and wants to keep her health problems private. The UK press are intrusive and horrible, and the social media conspiracy theories are just gossiping.

There are plenty of operations that would need a couple weeks of hospital recovery and about 6 weeks recovery at hone (Easter is only the end of March). People speculating are ignorant about basic medical matters and can't let someone have their privacy. There is no conspiracy.

Is it really that difficult to just not post a picture then? I mean, I've managed to go 40 years without posting any pictures to social media, and I'm not even a princess.

She had a breakdown, that's what's being hid.

How are they so bad at this?!

It's so bad it's like they're trying to inflate the attention on the royal family. I can't think of what they would gain from this type of attention, though... Other than to keep them relevant in the minds of the public and media, in the cheapest way possible?

I think they were trying to shut down the rumour mill as to why Kate hasn't been seen in months. Probably figured releasing a "photo" would do the trick. Little did they know there's a worldwide network of researchers checking photos for just this kind of thing.

Palace staff f'ed up.

"What do me mean what can we do? Just hire a photoshop expert from fiver.com. Do I have to do everything for you?"

a worldwide network of researchers

It doesn't take a photoshop expert to notice something off.
The tree in the background has leaves on it, in early march.

Maybe it was in a pot and only recently transplanted to make the garden look nice.

What's happening? I don't keep up on British conspiracy theories.

From reading the article, she hasn't been seen since Christmas and there were theories that she was in a coma or something.

Then a photo of her gets finally released, and it appears to be digitally pieced together.

The kids have also not been seen afaik and are not attending school.

Look at the boys hand on the left too.

I’ve seen Dune 2, this is just him telling the housekeeper to bring more biscuits.

the voice BRING ME MORE TEA

I'm going to be the pedantic person I guess.

The voice isn't really the same as the force, making people do something. It's a kind of emotional manipulation. The Bene Gesserit are highly in tune with emotions, and they have learned to examine people and say things in a way that they can't refuse. Jessica (and Paul to an extent) in the movie just have magic powers it seems, but the others it's more clear what's going on. Like when Paul is doing his speech to turn the Fremen into his followers, he's reading them emotionally and manipulating them. (Paul is also a Mentat in the books, so he's really good with logic too and that plays a role as well.)

Sorry to be the book person. I hope this was interesting enough to justify ruining the joke.

Complete other aside, but is that where mentats in Fallout get their name? Its just a Dune reference? Neat.

If my memory serves me, it’s a mixture of a Dune reference and a goof on Mentos breath mints/candy.

Huh. I never made that connection but it makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't be surprised.

I read the books 25 years ago and totally forgot Paul became a mentat.

Little over-energetic kids do weird finger stuff sometimes when trying to hold still. But the older two also, it does look like something kids might do to protest a sham picture that lies about their mum. The lack of a wedding ring also feels significant.

I'm an adult and I still do weird stuff with my fingers. I absolutely cross my fingers like that.

conspiracy theorists gonna conspiracy I guess

I think he's throwing up his gang sign. This motherfucker's a crip.

My middle finger has never bended in that way, and I thing with the tendons being the way they are, curling your pointer in while crossing your ring would be… impressive…

I suspect that they used AI to edit out something like a toy or whatever, and failed to notice.

In any case, fidgety kids is why you take dozens of shots, whoever released that photo wasn’t paying attention

I can do it with both hands. It feels awkward but not really uncomfortable. for whatever that's worth

and I thing with the tendons being the way they are, curling your pointer in while crossing your ring would be… impressive…

I find it incredibly easy to do. It's mildly uncomfortable to get my middle finger in that position, but once it's there, curling my index finger is no harder than usual.

E: picture of my hand doing the thing

I do weirder shit as a stimming thing too

Not sure if these images are going through everywhere, so maybe have a look at my instance?

And the second one

Can confirm I can't see the images on lemm.ee. And your links require people to sign up for your instance to actually view them.

Hopefully this link works. It does for me at least.

E: oh, for future reference, I was able to get a working link by going to your instance and clicking Copy Mbin URL instead of original URL

Yeah, but the ring finger is all wrong. Its base doesn't line up with the rest of it.

It is more subtle, but it looks like both of the other two children are crossing fingers as well. The boy in the middle seems to possibly be crossing his middle and ring fingers on his left hand and the girl is definitely crossing the same two fingers on her right hand. And Kate's blurry hand on the kid's waist makes little sense when nothing around it is motion blurred, unless, I guess, maybe she was yanking it away at the moment the photo was taken? But it seems like if that was the case the wrinkle/ fold in his shirt right in front of her hand would be moving too and not be as crisp as it is.

The common denominator is the ring finger, and she's not wearing her ring.

If I may put on mg tinfoil hat for a moment, those kids are obviously trying to tell everyone the person in the photo is not their mother, and is in fact a cloud person from Alpha Centauri.

The only true giveaway is the girl's left sleeve (our right) which has some erased parts (where it meets the hand). Everything else might be weird but no way to confirm, however that sleeve is 100% edited no doubt.

Not sure where you found this photo, I clicked a bunch of the links looking for the full photo and gave up. I did notice that only the kid closest to the window actually has a reflection though.

Maybe we can solve this like when Reddit solved the Boston Marathon bombing

Trueblood Royals don't have reflections. That kid is the new Harry.

This is Business Insider's front page right now including this story on the right (which it is also complaining about on the left). It's really weird. Who exactly are they trying to appeal to, bankers who read the National Inquirer?

What a fucking tabloid mess.

But a really weird one, right?

Like you wouldn't expect a tabloid to have a bunch of financial news and you wouldn't expect a financial news source to have a bunch of tabloid stuff.

They're a big company. They must have market research people. So what is the demographic they've found that makes this make sense?

BI has been doing tabloid-level journalism for a long time now, this doesn't seem out of character for them at all. I'm sure their market research is entirely focused on maximizing engagement workout any concern about their reputation.

SO weird. You make a very good point… is there some tabloid reader/business person overlap somewhere? Like, a huge one that’s invisible to normal people?

My guess would be to launder otherwise unpalatable, right wing, conspiracy bullshit. Pretty clever. Financial news is usually pretty straightforward and somewhat predictable. If it's on here, then maybe it's not so outrageous, right?

Perhaps the customers are CEOs of AI companies who might want to sell the royals better deepfake technology?

If you look at the picture the photo shopping is fairly obvious, ignoring all the other nonsense being thrown in.

The guardian has a zoomed up view of the area and it's pretty crude photoshopping. It's more than blurring.

I get why news agencies are withdrawing it when they have policies against manipulation beyond anything simple like removing dust specks.

I hate when there are leaves on the tres in early mach.

Definitely won't last through Mach 3

The sequel will be great though, Mach 4: Mach ado about nothing

Are y'all referring to a specific location? There's trees with leaves all over the place where I am. Am I missing something?

Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s not, photography/photoshop etc aren’t my thing but maybe she really did have surgery not that long ago and wants to be left alone while she recovers? I feel like if she was dead we would know because that would be its own huge thing, so, just let the poor woman deal with whatever it is she’s going through.

They take quite a lot of money from the British public (taxes, not donations. They = British royal family). Part of the cost of that is being in the public eye. If she really thought royals deserved privacy I'm sure she would have said something when Meghan was being destroyed by the media.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/meghan-markle-kate-middleton-double-standards-royal

Yeah I get that but at the end of the day she’s still just human. And what they did to Meghan was very fucked up and she most definitely didn’t deserve it.

who?

Unimportant British royal who will eventually be queen if the stories have no weight

I looked at this and at first it looked fine, then I started seeing one uncanny after another. Wtf

Another distraction from the fact that capitalism is destroying the planet.

What's wrong with them shopping an image?

Like what if the image they wanted to share was an oil painting? Would that be wrong? Even if being a painting meant that it may not in fact be an accurate portrayal?

It has been photoshopped more than these agencies allow, and the reason people are interested is because there is a lot of speculation right now about where Kate Middleton actually is.

I think more specifically they're OK with edited images, but it must be declared that the image was edited. The assumption without that declaration is that the image is not edited, aside from composition changes perhaps (cropping, lighting, noise reduction etc).

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I don't understand what would be photoshopped in that part of the image though. it's too far down to be Kate's hand, and if the kid was photoshopped in, why is her dress underneath showing through? The shop could only be concealing something ON the kid, right?

My guess is she was holding a doll or something and that's what was manipulated out

I'm also not actually following any of this this though. Anybody got a TL;DR in what the conspiracy theorists are claiming?

She, the Princess of Wales, went missing following a surgery at the beginning of the year. The most prevalent claim is that there was a complication with the surgery and may be in a coma or worse.

The idea is that telltale signs of the photo being altered would imply the family is hiding her condition and released a fake photo to buy time

The thing I don’t get is why hide it at all. “She’s recovering. That’s all you get to know.” Is going to attract the same attention as trying to hide it, while telling sane people to fuck off.

Unless they offed her. But uh, we won’t go there.

Well this would be another outspoken woman that was not traditionally married that died in suspicious circumstances within two generations. To say it wouldn't look suspicious would be a lie.

I would expect that, if they really wanted to assassinate her… they’d have found something less interesting. Like maybe something that gives her cancer or something.

I don't see anything in these photos that warrants an article. Seems like another lame click-bait conspiracy, probably cooked up by tabloids or the equally brain-damaged: "But where's Kate?!1" Even The Verge has an article, JFC.

Social media will continue to fuel endless garbage from the minds of who-the-fuck-knows and literally insane people. Can't wait for AI to turborcharge humanity's decent into madness.

It looks like they used AI to generate a photo and then clumsily tried to clean up the artifacts in photoshop.

Her knees also look a bit odd as well. I know they get cut off, but just the way they come to the end of the photo, I can’t imagine how else they continue like that. Unless they’re just at an odd angle, they look really weird.

Fwiw, this article has a version that's less cropped...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/breaking-kate-middleton-shares-brand-32289601.amp

That same pic is in the article. You just have to scroll down and wait for the X-formerly-Twitter link to load.

The boys hand in that photo is from shitty ai. If that image’s source was from some official press outlet, they’re failing at their jobs.

Yeah I tried to get my fingers to do that, and it is not physically possible. I have flexible fingers.

I have the strong feeling that this is purely sourced from more racism.