Metadata confirms that Kate Middleton's family photo has been altered

world News

by Alex Oliveira

Metadata from Kate Middleton's suspicious Mother's Day photo confirms that it was edited at least twice before it was published – the first verifiable bit of truth about the infamous photo since the Princess of Wales allegedly manipulated it.

The information encoded in the royal snapshot shows two timestamps, the first reading “2024-03-08T21:54:11Z”, and the second reading “2024-03-09T09:39:47Z” – indicating that the image was first edited at 9 o'clock: 54pm on Friday, March 8, and then again at 9:39am the next morning.

These timestamps confirm Middleton's admission on Monday that the photo had been edited, but offer no idea whether it was actually taken last week as the royal family initially claimed when it was published.

The royal family published the photo for the first time on Sunday in an apparent attempt to quell rumors swirling about Middleton's health. She underwent abdominal surgery in January and, except for a brief, blurry sighting on Monday, has not been seen in public since December.

But the image's glaring editing flaws only served to fan the flames of conspiracy theories, with investigators analyzing the footage to speculate that it had either been edited from a months-old photo shoot, or pieced together from a number of other shots.

Others fear the photo indicates something is seriously wrong with Middleton.

“There is something terribly wrong,” a source close to the situation told The Washington Post. “The idea that Kate couldn't sit for a single shoot tells me this is a much more serious situation than anyone knows.”

Metadata can be pulled from images using editing software, and can be used to learn the details of their creation. It was first examined in a royal family photo by Sky News.

Analysis of Middleton's photo indicates that it was taken using an “EF50mm” lens, attached to a Canon SLR camera.

The timestamped edits were for changes made using Adobe Photoshop, the industry standard for image editing.

It's not clear based on the metadata who made the edits or when the photo was first taken, but the edits were made and saved on an Apple computer.

Since the edit was accepted, royal fans have demanded that the original photo be published, but the family has so far refused.