What does the doctored Kate Middleton photo say about our current information dystopia?

Over the last week, a now infamous photo of Kate Middleton uploaded to social media has turned people curious about her absence from the public eye into full-blown conspiracy theorists.

On March 8 — which is Mother's Day in the United Kingdom — Kensington Palace posted a seemingly innocuous photo of Kate and her three kids at home, hoping to quash the rumours around her lack of public appearances since December of last year.

But a series of editing errors in the photo has created even more speculation. Eagle-eyed Instagram users noticed wonky shadows, blurry hands, a random zipper in Kate's hair and the sleeve of her daughter's sweater disappearing into her skirt. 

News agencies like the Associated Press refused to run the photo because they could see it had been doctored.

To break down this photo fiasco and explain why nothing showcases the choose-your-own information dystopia we're living in better, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud is joined by Charlie Warzel, staff writer at The Atlantic. Warzel wrote a piece called Kate Middleton and the End of the Shared Reality.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: What makes this story so ripe for people to project on it, do you think? 

Charlie: I think that there are two main elements. And the first element is conspiracy theories in general and viral conspiratorial style moments — especially online — they work best with big institutions with a lot of power and control. The older the better.

So first you have this institution and this declining trust in a lot of institutions, especially the monarchy. For example, the stuff that happened with Harry and Meghan. There's a long line of people who are feeling like they're losing their power. And that is great for conspiracy theories. It's very rich and fertile soil for that. 

The second is that we're in this era of synthetic media that is just beginning to get really good. We've had things like Photoshop before. It's been around for 30 years. People doctor photos all the time. But now you have the influence and introduction of generative AI, so it's an opening of plausibility. Maybe anything can be doctored. Have you seen these tools? They're really good. So maybe Kate didn't even have to sit down for that photo. Maybe it's not only even photoshopped. You have this opening of potential and plausibility and those two things are colliding. It's the perfect condition for this stuff to fester. And I think that's why we're seeing this really take hold.

Elamin: So this story matters because there's a real human being at the centre of all of this who may be really suffering. I hope she's okay. But also this scales up kind of quickly. The future of a democratic country does not depend on the veracity of this specific image, but we are just a few months away from an election in your country — in the United States. We're like a year and a half away from an election in this country — in Canada. So there are consequences to whether we can trust an image or not. How does this bode for the elections, whether here, in Canada or in the United States or anywhere else? 

Charlie: I think it's tough to say, because the way that generative AI and these deepfakes works, at least to my mind, is it's not just a one to one. No one believes anything that they see. There's definitely that aura of anything is possible. 

One thing that I didn't get to fit into my piece that I think is really key here, is so much of why this is a big viral moment — and why people are so interested — is because this is a story of the fundamental tale of the internet, which is big institutions and people with control, losing control to these larger networks. 

The royal family is a group that knows how to control the narrative, that has cosy relationships, that controls who gets to tell their story and how they tell it. How they get to present themselves to the world. And it's all so carefully cultivated over centuries. And what you're seeing now is them responding to internet gossip. 

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low