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Why do we feel like the Kate Middleton photo scandal is just beginning? That news, in which England’s royal family had to admit that the Princess of Wales edited a photo of her family sent to news agencies, is still stirring. And now, Instagram is stepping in.
The Prince and Princess of Wales have more than 15 million followers on their instagram accountand the now infamous and heavily edited photo of Kate and her children was posted there on March 10. But if you are going to that photo nowYou’ll see that Instagram has covered it with a red text warning that says: “Altered photo/video. The same doctored photo was reviewed by independent fact-checkers in another post.”
Click on the warning and you’ll receive a message from Instagram saying: “Independent fact-checkers say the photo or image has been edited in a way that could mislead people, but not because it was shown out of context.” that to a fact checker, EFE Verifies.
Obviously, if you’re on Instagram, you know that influencers and celebrities in particular use Photoshop, filters, airbrushing apps, and other editing tools to change the look of the photos they post all the time, and without being affected by Instagram Warnings. . (Kardashian family anyone?) But Instagram seems to be commenting less on the fact that Kate may have softened her hair or adjusted Princess Charlotte’s sleeve, and more that the photo was featured as a news photo and then remembered for the same news agencies that originally shared it.
Instagram did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why some edited photos receive a warning and others do not.
It’s a reminder that we are now in a brave new world of manipulated images. Even prominent figures are comfortable trying to pass off doctored photographs as authentic, it’s never clear how much editing has gone into a published image and people can’t be blamed for being suspicious.
Car photo controversy
Earlier in the week, a different photo of the princess also came under fire. The photography agency that provided an image of the Prince and Princess of Wales together in a Range Rover on Monday, the same day the princess apologized for her editing, it is talking about his own photo. In a statement, Goff Photos said he did not change the photo of him beyond the most basic updates.
“(The) images of the Prince and Princess of Wales in the back of the Range Rover have been cropped and lightened,” but “nothing has been retouched,” the statement said, according to Today.com. Goff Photos did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The photo of William and Kate in the Range Rover is difficult to look at, and online sleuths didn’t find as many mistakes in it as they did in the family photo. But there was still quite a stir about it, and some questioned the brick wall shownand others who claim Kate’s hair was edited from an older photo, and Goff Photos felt it had to make a statement.
NBC News also reported that it found no evidence that the image had been digitally altered.
How do we get here?
Kate’s surgery sparked rumors
Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William and future queen of England, underwent abdominal surgery in january. The original statement issued about her condition said that she would not be seen until after Easter, although a paparazzi photo of the princess and her mother was released last week.
Despite the palace’s original statement, rumors about Middleton’s whereabouts reached a fever pitch on social media. Was she seriously ill? Dead? Had she separated from Prince William? There was no evidence for any of those theories, but if we don’t give the Internet any news, people will make things up.
The family photo was obviously edited.
The commotion accelerated on March 10, when a seemingly everyday family image of Kate and her children was sent to news agencies to mark Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom. But then those groups sent a rare notice requesting that their clients no longer use the photo, saying had been manipulated.
Within hours, the royal family admitted that the photo had been changed, and the princess herself took the blame.
“Like many amateur photographers, I experiment with editing from time to time,” he said in a rare apology. The British tabloid The Daily Mail reported that palace representatives refused to publish the original Photography. Kensington Palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Then came the photo of the Range Rover.
While the Internet was still talking about the edited photo, Goff Photos posted its own image, an image of a Range Rover with two hard-to-see passengers, who appear to be Prince William and Kate.
Palace representatives probably would have liked that photo to have ended people’s concerns about whether Kate is alive and well. But since suspicions were already high and the photo itself was difficult to make out, that wasn’t going to happen and a whole new world of conspiracy theories was born.
Real or manipulated? How to know if a photo is edited
Image manipulation is not new. The famous Joseph Stalin of Russia removed political enemies from photos almost a century ago. Since then, manipulated images have become so common in some sectors of society that some celebrities have began to publicly criticize the practice.
Although it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify a manipulated photograph, there are some telltale signs. Some of the signs that the real image was manipulated included strangely discolored strands of hair, strangely changing lines on her clothing, and a zipper. that seemed to change color and appearance.
Some companies have tried to help ensure that we can at least identify when an image is manipulated. Samsung announced that its Galaxy S24, for example, adds metadata and a watermark to identify photos manipulated with AI. AI-generated images also often have the wrong number of fingers or teeth on their subjects, although the technology is improving.
Other companies have also begun to promise some form of identification for images created or edited by AI, but so far there is no standard. Meanwhile, Adobe and other companies have created new ways to confirm that an image is realwaiting for what at least guarantee when an image is authentic.
The landscape has changed so quickly that there are now startups trying to create ways to identify when images are authentic and when they have been manipulated. CNET’s Sareena Dayaram writes that Google’s AI tools newly integrated into the company’s photos app open up interesting photo editing possibilities while also raising questions about the authenticity and credibility of online images.
Read more: AI or not AI: Can you detect the real photos?
More editing, more AI: editing photos on your phone
Photoshop has always been capable of doing amazing things. in the right hands. But it hasn’t always been easy.
That has begun to change with AI-powered editing tools, including those added to Photoshop in recent years. While the political ramifications of photo editing sound alarming, the personal benefits of this technology can be incredible. One feature, called generative fill, imagines the world beyond the boundaries of a photograph, effectively moving away from an image.
AI tools are also being trained to help people edit photos more effectively, even allowing you to focus on specific parts of images and turn them into cute stickers to share with friends.
This is in addition to techniques such as high dynamic range or HDR, which has become a standard feature, particularly in mobile phone cameras. It is designed to capture high contrast scenes by taking and then combining multiple dark and bright images.
Google’s Magic Eraser photo tool can remove random strangers from your images with a few taps and works for many devices, including Apple’s iPhone.
And Google’s Pixel 8 phone, released last year, includes a feature called Best Take, which ensures that everyone in a photo smiles by combining multiple images, effectively creating a new image taken from all the others.
Meanwhile, Apple has focused on adding features to automatically improve image quality, including the iPhone 15 Pro’s new ability to change focus after taking a portrait photo.
Read more: You should use Google magic photo editing tool
Changing the political landscape
While AI can help make photos look much better, it will cause serious problems in the world of politics.
Companies like OpenAI, Google, and Facebook have touted text-to-video tools that can create ultra-realistic videos of people, animals, and scenes that don’t exist in the real world, but internet troublemakers have used AI tools to create fake pornography. of celebrities. Like Taylor Swift.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump have also created images showing the now-presidential candidate surrounded by fake black voters as part of disinformation campaigns to “encourage African Americans to vote Republican.” BBC reported.
“If someone votes one way or another because of a photo they see on a Facebook page, it is a problem with that person, not with the publication itself,” one of the creators of the fake photos, the Florida radio show host Mark Kaye. BBC.
In its State of the Union Address Delivered March 7, President Joe Biden called on Congress to “ban artificial intelligence voice spoofing.” That call came after scammers created fake AI-generated recordings of Biden encouraging Democratic voters not to vote in the New Hampshire presidential primary earlier this year. The measure also led to the Federal Communications Commission to ban robocalls using AI generated voices.
As CNET’s Connie Guglielmo wrote, the New Hampshire example shows the dangers of AI-generated voice impersonations. “But do we have to ban them all?” she asked. “There are potential use cases that aren’t so bad, like the quiet app have an AI-generated version of Jimmy Stewart tell a bedtime story.”
AI in images: it’s far from over
It’s unlikely that Middleton’s Photoshop rampage can be attributed to AI, but the technology is being integrated into image editing at a rapid pace, and the next edited photo may not be as easy to spot.
As Stephen Shankland wrote at CNET, we are right to wonder how much truth there is in the photos we see.
“It’s true that there’s a need to be more skeptical these days, especially with emotionally charged social media photos of provocative influencers and shocking wars,” Shankland wrote. The good news is that for many photos that matter, such as those in an insurance claim or those published by the media, technology is coming that can digitally generate some confidence in the photo itself.”
See this: CNET’s professional photographers react to AI photos