Where is Kate Middleton?
To borrow a once-ubiquitous ’80s tagline from the National Enquirer: Inquisitiveness wants to know.
And they don’t just passively eat what they’re given. No, they’re all Miss Marples on Adderall. Taking full advantage of the power of the World Wide Web, they aggressively fabricate and spread outlandish theories and go deep down rabbit holes.
Four photos of the Princess of Wales have been released since it was announced in January that she would be taking a three-month break from royal duties to recover from abdominal surgery. And each one only fueled further speculation about what was really going on with her. Or, if the photo is uniform, of She or doppelganger.
Kate Anon admirers include Kim Kardashian (who captioned an Instagram photo “On my way to find Kate”) and Andy Cohen (who tweeted “That’s not Kate” after the latest photo was released) ), including people like wild princess).
On the other hand, what’s the harm in making fun of royal expenses?
Meanwhile, all the palace intrigue and intrigue fueled by this fake photo is starting to feel like a harbinger of strange, dark events to come in society, where we’re all left questioning what’s even real. I’m starting to have it.
PhotoShop, AI, and deepfakes: As technology advances, so too does our skepticism about who and what to believe.
Even Google betrayed our trust when its Gemini chatbot image generator provided wildly inaccurate images like the one below. Among the founding fathers were a black Viking, a female pope, and a Native American.
We have officially stepped into the portal. It’s the strange world science fiction writers have been hoping for for generations. And it’s so scary.
In the wake of the uproar over Middleton altering her Mother’s Day portrait (taken by her husband Prince William), the news agency revealed other photos taken by Middleton and officially released by Buckingham Palace. I started looking into it.”
Getty Images warned on Tuesday that one photo of the late Queen Elizabeth and her grandchildren, taken by Middleton in 2022 and released the following year, “has been digitally altered at the source.”
Meanwhile, the 2024 presidential election has already seen deepfake videos and images used in campaigns to boost or undermine candidates. And even if the images were real, you could simply blame the AI.
Donald Trump did that.
Democratic politicians responded to a report that questioned Joe Biden’s memory and cognitive abilities with a montage of President Trump’s gaffes.
The 77-year-old was quick to say it was an AI hoax.
Why not? Sometimes it happens, as in the photo of President Trump’s head resting on the chubby body of golfer John Daly, who played a round last month.
“Fake news used artificial intelligence (AI) to create a situation…” President Trump wrote. society of truth. “They’re despicable people, and we all know that.”
Smart people, including people I know, are obsessed with images, even if they are ridiculous.
Remember when there were masses? Were you fooled by the photo of the Pope styling himself at Balenciaga last year?
All of this has created a culture of distrust and smoldering suspicion, shaking the landscape of our shared reality.
And in the end, when we finally find out what really tormented Middleton, it will definitely be so banal that people won’t believe it either.
