When photo and data experts caught Princess Kate significantly manipulating a seemingly benign Mother’s Day photo earlier this month, they set off an international firestorm that’s engulfed the British royal family in waves of criticism and conspiracy theories.
It’s also been educational. The royal uproar served as a reminder of the metadata that’s typically hidden beneath all those photos and videos we see online. Yes, the data that powers helpful tricks, like searching “Washington, DC” in your photos app and getting all your snapshots from a recent vacation. Now, it’s become a lifeline for journalists and online detectives trying to discern what’s real in the spiraling royal drama.
Image manipulation isn’t new, but its impact has accelerated with the power of social media. Regular people have access to ever-improving tools that use a mix of artificial intelligence and other technologies, and run on nearly anyone’s smartphone, tablet or computer. Companies are ramping up efforts to help us identify manipulated data, but there appears to be no easy answer for now.
Read more: How Close Is That Photo to the Truth? What to Know in the Age of AI
What does metadata have to do with Kate Middleton?
Sky News reported that the type of camera used to take at least some part of Middleton’s now-infamous photo was a Canon 5D Mark IV. The publication said it learned this based on the metadata in the photo itself. The news outlet also identified the shutter speed and other settings of the camera when the original image was snapped. Sky News could also tell the image had been snapped at the royal family’s home in Windsor.
Most telling in this scenario, Sky News was able to tell that the image had been run through Adobe’s popular Photoshop software on a Mac computer at least twice.
TMZ was able to identify similar information when the celebrity gossip site published a grainy video of Middleton and Prince William earlier this week, indicating that it had been shot on an iPhone 12 Pro…
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