Storm in a Royal Doulton teacup

Who of you has not winced when looking at family photos, wondering if something couldn’t be done to make them more flattering?

In the pre-digital days, you had to know a really skilled photo retoucher to massage your image to a more beautiful state but, these days, there is all manner of software and even, lately, artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate the pixels into a more pleasing agglomeration.

You can even do it at the scene of the crime with your AI-enabled smartphone.

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So, perhaps, it’s really a storm in a Royal Doulton teacup that so much has been written – and said – about the fiddling which Catherine, Princess of Wales, supposedly did to a family picture officially released by Kensington Palace.

The Princess was forced to go public after a number of news agencies withdrew the image after doubts were raised about it being altered – something which violates their strict policies on not using pictures which have been manipulated.

While it may have been a harmless “experiment”, as Kate put it in a hastily issued clarification, the incident does point to the darker side of information manipulation, which has only become more worrying as AI image and text modification and invention improves.

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