Will Catherine, Princess of Wales release a Mother's Day picture this year? Flashback to Kate Middleton's Photoshop nightmare

She was taken into hospital in early January, and discharged on January 29. She was not seen until the Mother’s Day picture - and in tandem with King Charles’ revelation on February 5 last year that he was suffering from cancer, it appeared, sadly that the royal family might again be heading for an annus horribilis.

So far, so upsetting. But then a Mother’s Day picture was published - as is usual, with no fanfare and just uploaded to social media - of Kate and their children together. For the first few hours the coverage was as usual. But then eagle-eyed royal observers and journalists noticed some anomalies. They weren’t huge, but they included parts of a sleeve missing, hair apparently being retouched, jumper patterns not sitting correctly and background distortion in the building shown behind the family, amongst others.

And when these started to gain traction, they became the story. Suddenly everything was scrutinised, and several corners of social media, to be frank, went nuts - were the plants in the background too green and too leafy for March? Why was the grass so verdant at the end of what had been a cold winter? (Mother’s Day fell on Sunday, March 10 in 2024, much earlier than this year.) The children may have been wearing clothes that they had been spotted in at an event the previous autumn - was it an old picture? - and why was Kate wearing tight jeans if she had recently had abdominal surgery?

Add all this to the fact that she had not been seen publicly since a Christmas church service in December and the more excitable end of the bench of conspiracists were asking whether she was even still alive. Or had William and Kate split up and had she returned to her parents? Had the Royal Family acted like a mafia gang and done away with her? [Regular reminder in this saga to remember that this did concern a woman convalescing from an unknown surgery - although she had not yet revealed the cancer diagnosis, she was still potentially quite unwell].

But but but... releasing an edited picture was clumsy. Understandably, news agencies who pride themselves on their reputation for accuracy and fairness dropped the picture as they couldn’t be sure of the extent to which it was doctored. The British PA news agency was among several including Reuters and Getty who issued a “kill notice” and dropped the picture from their archives. PA said: “We became aware of concerns about the image and we carried a report about it last night, and made clear that we were seeking urgent clarification about the image from Kensington Palace,” PA continued. “In the absence of that clarification, we are killing the image from our picture service.”

Eventually, a statement from Kate was sent out by Kensington Palace on the Monday: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day.”

But this didn’t dispel the speculation. The fact that the more excitable royal-watching corners of X have in many places turned themselves unhelpfully into Team Meghan and Team Kate meant that the whole brouhaha gained extra traction as ammunition for those who perpetuate a narrative that the Sussexes have been wronged somehow, in their “exile” in California, and that the Waleses are to blame.

But even for more rational people, the case threw up some interesting lessons about the modern world and the monarchy’s place in it. You could say that millions of people use filters on cameras and apps like Instagram every day - and yet this “old fashioned” manual editing, seemingly done in Photoshop, fell beyond the pale - and that the controversy was a storm in a teacup. That’s probably true, but it goes beyond that. It speaks to the strange relationship that some of this country - and beyond - wants with royalty. They are there to be put on a pedestal, but that pedestal is not for worship - it’s for examination. Despite their gilded lives, they must be authentic, and they must play the roles allotted to them. [Side issue: there’s a thesis to be written on why everyone still refers to her as “Kate Middleton” despite the fact she’s been married for more than a decade. What does that say about our attitudes?]

So although millions of people have no doubt touched up a family snap to make it look more presentable for social media, and indeed phones now allow you to take several pictures and then will create for you an amalgam of the “best” version, it is not acceptable for the royals to do so because that would suggest that their public image is not directly linked to the private versions of themselves. They play parts for us.

But aside from that, from the perspective of the media, it also shows the growing problem that editing, and more pertinently AI will play. Hoaxes will no doubt follow in the coming months and years in which a picture purportedly showing something incredible actually turns out to be the handiwork of Grok or ChatGPT, and indeed here is a picture of the Princess of Wales riding a motorbike without a helmet on, which I snapped only this morning.

(Of course I didn’t - this was created using the free version of Grok and took less than five minutes. It’s not that good - is it me or does Kate slightly resemble Elon Musk? - but simultaneously its very existence is mindblowing to anyone who thinks about the progress, whether good or bad, that has been made in AI and its accessibility).

But to get back to the point, any suggestion that AI or editing is involved in what is supposed to show real life will create a void in which conspiracy and distrust will fester. It’s something we will all - the media, the royal family, the public - need to get to grips with. So we await the arrival or not of a picture this weekend with interest. And we continue to wish all members of the royal family good health, even if they have been Photoshopped.