Users on TikTok, X and Facebook shared videos pointing out alleged AI breadcrumbing, including a ring disappearing and reappearing on Katherine’s hand. Some said that the hair was moving unnaturally, and that the daffodil bed in the background was suspiciously still.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” one woman says in a video that has been viewed 1.4 million times on TikTok, citing some news events and online images amid rapid advances in AI technology. It captures the general confusion surrounding the situation. The woman, whose TikTok profile describes her as a “world traveler, photographer, designer, and real estate investor,” has analyzed what she claims are signs of AI in Duchess Kate’s recorded remarks. , contributed to the confusion.
BBC Studios, the BBC’s television production arm, admitted it filmed a video of Kate’s message at Windsor Castle last week, and Kensington Palace told the Washington Post that accusations of AI tampering were “factually incorrect”. Ta. Several deepfake forensics experts agreed, saying they had examined the video and found no signs of AI manipulation.
“All the armchair forensic analysts who claim to have found evidence of AI manipulation are a perfect combination of ignorance and arrogance,” said Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in analyzing digital images. Ta. Farid said he reviewed the video and found “absolutely zero evidence” that AI was involved.
Earlier this week, TikTok appeared to distance users from searches related to such allegations. When I searched for “Kate Middleton cancer ai”, the result was “Kate Middleton cancer” instead. Users were given the option to proceed to the results of their original search. TikTok declined to comment.
This episode highlights how, in the age of AI, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell what’s real and what’s not. Already, former President Donald Trump has accused unscrupulous political ads of using AI-generated content, and fake images of actual politicians on both sides of the aisle have been widely circulated on social media. and destabilizes the concept of truth in the 2024 election.
“AI is looming pretty large,” Farid said. Key moments online are “instantly suspicious” and fuel a culture of conspiracy.
Social media speculation about Duchess Kate exploded after a series of mysterious events, leaving the public wanting more information about the princess’s health and well-being. In January, Kensington Palace released a statement saying Duchess Kate underwent “successful” abdominal surgery. Several weeks passed without the princess making her public appearance. And in early March, the palace released a hilarious photo of Kate and her three young children, which she later admitted had been edited. The incident raised even more questions and fueled conspiracy theories, as major news outlets withdrew the photos.
And in Friday’s video, a frail-looking Catherine sits alone on a bench in front of a garden filled with spring flowers. After breaking the news of her illness, she spoke of her heartbreaking efforts to “explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in the right way and reassure them that I was okay.” And she asks the world to let her care for her young family in peace.
The revelation of her cancer diagnosis shocked viewers and elicited an outpouring of love for the princess. Some online conspiracy theorists apologized for stirring up gossip about her long absence from public life. But new questions soon arose. “Can anyone explain how nothing moves in the background, flowers, grass, etc.?” (He was criticized as a “stupid”).
Wael Abd-Almagied AI Professor at Clemson University He, who develops deepfake detection software, said he and his students ran the videos through a detector and found no signs of AI content. Abd al-Maguid slowed down the video and inspected it manually, but again he found no evidence of AI tampering. If details like her ring look blurry, he said, it’s because of motion blur and video compression.
Another expert, Hao Li, CEO and co-founder of generative AI video effects company Pinscreen, also noted that the insects flying in front of Duchess Kate’s face and the yellow flowers in the background swayed subtly. They noted that the video was genuine and agreed that the video was genuine.
Only one AI expert contacted by the Post expressed support for the allegations. Deep Media, a deepfake detection startup contracted by the Department of Defense, said it had found that Duchess Kate’s voice and face were “likely” to have been manipulated by AI.
But other experts, including Farid, Abd al-Majied, and Claire Wardle, co-founder and co-director of the Institute for the Future of Information at Brown University, released Deep Media’s findings at the Post’s request. He said the results were not convincing.
Brown’s Wardle believes it is now difficult for even disinformation experts to assess the credibility of online content, and has warned institutions such as Kensington Palace and the BBC that images of online conspiracies are shared before they spread. He called for more efforts to be publicly verified.
She said the continued speculation surrounding Duchess Kate highlights the difficulty of assessing what is true in an AI-driven media environment, and the difficulty in distinguishing fact from fiction. He also highlighted the risks of relying on deepfake detectors.
“Most people don’t have access to the tools to do this kind of analysis,” Wardle said. “And even people who say they have these tools can never be 100 percent sure.”
