Last week, the Washington Post did a pretty even-handed piece about the conspiracies and confusion around the Princess of Wales’s cancer-announcement video, which was released on March 22. WaPo spoke to AI experts, most of whom said that the video was likely legitimate, although WaPo did speak to one Pentagon-contracted firm which said that the video had a “high likelihood” of being “manipulated with AI.” WaPo also got Kensington Palace on the record to say that accusations of AI tampering are “factually inaccurate.” WaPo’s larger point – and one which I strenuously agree with – is that Kensington Palace’s credibility is in the toilet after lying for months and manipulating multiple photos, so the palace and the BBC should do more to validate the video and ease concerns. It feels notable that no one has done anything like that – instead, BBC Studios has gone radio silent and no one has heard anything from KP in almost two weeks.
In the credibility vacuum, it was curious this week that Getty added an editor’s note to the palace-handout screencap photo from Kate’s video. It was basically a disclaimer saying: “This Handout image was provided by a third-party organization and may not adhere to Getty Images’ editorial policy.” “May not” is doing some heavy lifting. Well, now the NY Times has a piece called “How an Editors’ Note Fueled Another Kate Conspiracy Theory.” Some highlights:
Why did Getty add the disclaimer? With disinformation spreading fast online, at times amplified by hostile states, some social media users were primed for skepticism. A note from Getty Images beside the video announcement, released on March 22, said it “may not adhere” to its editorial policy and fanned more conspiracy theories over the video’s authenticity. There is no evidence, according to researchers, that the video is a deepfake, and agencies routinely attach such notes to content given to them by third parties. With images easy to manipulate, researchers say that news agencies are being transparent about the source of their content.
A standard editors’ note which only appears on a handful of photos: That disclaimer is not unique to this video. A spokeswoman for Getty Images said on Wednesday that it added a “standard editors’ note” to any content provided by third-party organizations. Other agencies also use such notes routinely for clarity. It was not clear when that policy came into practice, and the spokeswoman declined to comment further. Online sleuths, however, pointed out that the same note was added to a clip provided by a government agency of the bridge that collapsed last week in Baltimore.
Was the video a deepfake? “I don’t see any compelling evidence that it’s a deepfake,” said V.S. Subrahmanian, a professor of computer science at Northwestern University who has researched deepfakes. Professor Subrahmanian ran a copy of the video through a system of 15 algorithms his team has been developing to detect manipulated videos, and he also manually examined it with another analyst. Components such as the video’s audio and Kate’s movements appeared to be natural, and technical evidence suggested it was unlikely to be fake. “Context is a very big part of it,” he added. “The bigger context is that it was a video shot by the BBC, who is a highly reliable source.”
The problem with photo handouts: “[Photo agencies] are very keen not to take handouts and have their own photographers where possible,” said Nic Newman, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. News agencies, however, have concerns about the way public figures, including politicians and celebrities, are increasingly using handouts to try to “control the narrative,” he said. The note was an example of agencies’ efforts to be more transparent with their clients who used those photos, he said, but there was the risk that they could fuel conspiracy theories. “People often take those labels and then blow them up out of all proportion.”
The Mother’s Day photo fiasco: The episode prompted news agencies to look again at their policies, Mr. Newman said, and re-evaluate which sources were trustworthy. “The whole question of whether you can believe what you see is certainly not as clear as it used to be. There is a trust deficit in society, at least in the United States,” Professor Subrahmanian said. “Deepfakes have the potential to widen that trust deficit.”
“The bigger context is that it was a video shot by the BBC, who is a highly reliable source.” One would think, but again, it wasn’t filmed by BBC News, meaning there wasn’t an actual news crew around Kate. This was filmed by BBC Studios, and they still refuse to come out and talk about the filming or even confirm really basic facts about the video (when and where it was shot, what kind of camera was used, how many takes were done). Again, I felt a certain amount of relief two weeks ago when we learned that the BBC had been brought in to film the video – finally, the Kensington Palace clowns brought in mature professionals to manage their messaging. But everything since then has only raised more questions.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace, Getty, Avalon Red, Cover Images.