by UK newspaper cover of a digitally altered photograph of the royal family, in London on March 11, 2024. Credit – Rasid Necati Aslim – Anadolu/Getty Images
As an academic who has spent 25 years developing techniques to detect photo manipulation, I’m used to receiving panicked calls from reporters trying to authenticate a breaking story.
This time, the calls, emails and texts started rolling in on Sunday evening. Catherine, Princess of Wales, has not been seen in public since Christmas Day. Due to her abdominal surgery in January, there has been widespread speculation as to her whereabouts and well-being.
Sunday was Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom, and Kensington Palace released an official photo of her and her three children. The image was distributed by Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, and other media outlets. The picture then quickly went viral on social media platforms with thousands of views, shares and comments.
Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the past two months.
Happy Mother’s Day to everyone. c
📸 Prince of Wales, 2024 pic.twitter.com/6DywGBpLLQ
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 10, 2024
But hours later, the AP issued a rare “photo kill,” asking its customers to delete the image from their systems and archives because “on closer inspection it appears the image was manipulated by the source.”
The main concern appeared to be Princess Charlotte’s left sleeve, which showed clear signs of digital manipulation. What was unclear at the time was whether this obvious artifact was a sign of more significant photo editing, or an isolated instance of photo editing.
In an effort to find out, I began analyzing the image with forensic software designed to distinguish photographic images from purely AI-generated images. This analysis confidently classified the image as non-AI generated.
I then did a few more traditional forensic tests including analyzing the noise pattern of the lighting and sensor. None of these tests showed evidence of a more significant manipulation.
After all this, I concluded that the photo was probably edited using Photoshop or on-board camera editing tools. Although I can’t be 100% sure about it, this explanation is consistent with Princess Kate’s subsequent apology, released on Monday, where she said “Like many amateur photographers, I experiment with editing from time to time. I wanted to apologize for any confusion caused by the family photo we shared yesterday.”
Read more: The Kate Middleton Photo Controversy Shows The Royal PR Team Is Out Of Its Depth
In a rational world, this is the end of the story. But the world – and social media in particular – is nothing if not irrational. I’m already getting dozens of emails with “evidence” of more horrific photo manipulation and AI generation that is then being used to wildly speculate about Princess Kate’s health. And while the post-hoc forensic analyzes I do can help photo editors and journalists sort out stories like this, they don’t necessarily help combat rumors and conspiracies that spread quickly online.
Manipulated images are nothing new, even from official sources. The Associated Press, for example, temporarily suspended the agency’s distribution of official imagery from the Pentagon in 2008 after it released a digitally manipulated photo of the US military’s first female four-star general. The photo of General Ann E. Dunwoody was the second Army-supplied photo that the AP noticed in the previous two months. The AP finally began using these official photos after assurances from the Pentagon that military branches would be reminded of a Defense Department directive that prohibits the alteration of images if they are misrepresented. facts or circumstances of departure.
The problem, of course, is that modern technologies make it easy to change images and videos. And while it is often done for creative purposes, change can be problematic when it comes to images of real events, undermining trust in journalism.
Detection software can be useful on an ad-hoc basis, highlighting problem areas of an image, or where an image may have been generated by AI. But it has limitations, as it is neither scalable nor consistently accurate — and bad actors will always be one step ahead of the latest detection software.
Read more: How to Get an AI-Generated Image Like Pope Balenciaga
So what to do?
The answer is probably digital sourcing – understanding the origin of digital files, whether images, video, audio, or anything else. Provenance covers not only how the files were created, but also whether, and how, they were manipulated during their journey from creation to publication.
Adobe established the Content Authentication Initiative (CAI) in late 2019, which makes Photoshop and other powerful editing software. It is now a community of more than 2,500 leading media and technology companies, working to implement an open source technical standard.
That open standard was developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an organization formed by Adobe, Microsoft, the BBC, and others within the Linux Foundation. It is focused on building ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. The C2PA standard quickly emerged as “best in class” in the digital source space.
C2PA has developed Content Credentials – which are equivalent to a “nutrition label” for digital creations. By clicking on the distinctive “cr” logo on or next to an image, a viewer can see where the image (or other file) comes from.
The authentication protocols are being incorporated into hardware devices – cameras and smartphones – specifically so that future viewers can accurately determine the date, time and location of a photo at the point of capture. The same technology is already part of Photoshop and other editing programs, allowing editing changes to a file to be logged and audited.
All that information pops up when the viewer clicks on the “cr” icon, and in the same clear format and plain language as a nutrition label on the side of a cereal box.
If this technology were in full use today, news photo editors could review the Content Credentials of the Royal Family photo before publication and avoid the panic of retraction.
That’s why the Content Authentication Initiative is working towards global adoption of Content Credentials, and why media companies like the BBC are already gradually introducing these labels. Others, like the AP and AFP, are working to do so later this year.
Universal adoption of this standard means that, over time, every piece of digital content can eventually carry Content Credentials, creating a common understanding of what to trust and why. Proving what is true rather than perceiving what is false – replaces doubt with certainty.
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