If you’re looking for an image that perfectly showcases the confusion and chaos of a choose-your-own-reality information dystopia, you probably couldn’t do better than yesterday’s portrait of Catherine, Princess of Wales. In just one day, the photograph has transformed from a hastily released piece of public-relations damage control into something of a Rorschach test—a collision between plausibility and conspiracy.

For the uninitiated: Yesterday, in celebration of Mother’s Day in the U.K., the Royal Family released a portrait on Instagram of Kate Middleton with her three children. But this was no ordinary photo. Middleton has been away from the public eye since December reportedly because of unspecified health issues, leading to a ceaseless parade of conspiracy theories. Royal watchers and news organizations naturally pored over the image, and they found a number of alarming peculiarities. According to the Associated Press, “the photo shows an inconsistency in the alignment of Princess Charlotte’s left hand”—it looks to me like part of the princess’s sleeve is disappearing. Such oddities were enough to cause the AP, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters to release kill notifications—alerts that the wire services would no longer distribute the photo. The AP noted that the photo appeared to have been “manipulated.”

Across social media, onlookers offered amateur analyses of the photograph, suggesting that it was poorly Photoshopped or perhaps touched up using AI. They wondered why there are leaves on the trees despite the photo supposedly having been taken in early March. The children seem to have weird hand positions. There are unexpectedly blurred lines in the image, and Middleton is missing her wedding and engagement rings. “I wasn’t in on this whole conspiracy about Kate Middleton missing and the royals covering it up until they dropped this obviously fake photo today to appease public concern,” one amateur photographer wrote on X, citing a “few unexplainable issues.”

[Read: Just asking questions about Kate Middleton]

In response to the blowback, Kensington Palace released a statement earlier today—signed with a “C,” likely in reference to Middleton’s formal name, Catherine—saying in part that “like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing.” That post has only made things worse. As one popular response to the statement put it, “I am struggling to believe that the most famous royal family in the world—and the woman who would be queen—fiddled around with photoshop and put out a family pic (designed to quash rumours about her whereabouts) without anyone in the ranks inspecting it. Nah. Not buying it.”

For years, researchers and journalists have warned that deepfakes and generative-AI tools may destroy any remaining shreds of shared reality. Experts have reasoned that technology might become so good at conjuring synthetic media that it becomes difficult for anyone to believe anything they didn’t witness themselves. The royal-portrait debacle illustrates that this era isn’t forthcoming. We’re living in it.

This post-truth universe doesn’t feel like chaotic science fiction. Instead, it’s mundane: People now feel a pervasive, low-grade disorientation, suspicion, and distrust. And as the royal-photo fiasco shows, the deepfake age doesn’t need to be powered by generative AI—a hasty Photoshop will do.

Back in 2018, I spoke with Renee DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, about AI tools being used by bad actors to cast doubt on real events. “You don’t need to create the fake video for this tech to have a serious impact,” she said at the time. “You just point to the fact that the tech exists and you can impugn the integrity of the stuff that’s real.” This dynamic works in the opposite direction too, as demonstrated by the royal portrait released yesterday. The popular emergence of generative AI has deepened uncertainty in an already-skeptical information environment, leading people to suspect that anything could be the product of synthetic media.

To my untrained eye, there appears to be no sign that the image of Middleton and her children was made with a generative-AI tool. It does not, for example, have any of the gauzy hallmarks of some of the big-name programs, such as Midjourney. Yet some people have seized upon small details in the photo to claim that it is indeed synthetic: Observers have argued that the children’s hands and teeth look off, which are classic giveaways that an image was made by AI. The most likely explanation, of course, is that the children were squirming or perhaps clumsily Photoshopped to get the best individual take of each child across multiple shots. But the fact that AI image tools exist offers a juicier, perhaps more sinister option of fakery, one that might imply that the princess is far worse off than the monarchy is letting on. This is tinfoil-hat stuff—and yet, it is also theoretically, technically possible. And it is true that some hyperrealistic image models produce such high-quality images that it’s quite difficult to distinguish between real people and fake ones. Even hastily made AI photos can fool casual observers—remember the Pope Coat from last year?

All of these anxieties and suspicions are most potent when they intersect with a subject where genuine conspiracy seems plausible. And when it comes to the Princess of Wales, there is some weird stuff going on. As my former colleague Ellie Hall, who extensively covers the Royal Family, noted in an interview last week, Kensington Palace’s public-relations strategy has been “out of character”—the communications team doesn’t usually respond to gossip. There’s also been a dearth of speculative coverage from British tabloids, which Hall notes has aroused suspicions. And then, of course, there’s the photo, which Hall wrote was distributed by the palace in an “unprecedented” manner. The seemingly sloppy Photoshopping, then, is merely the final, very odd straw. A good conspiracy theory involves a lot of world building—the more twists and turns and murky details, the better, Mike Caulfield, a researcher at the University of Washington, told me last year: “And it’s all possible because there is some grain of reality at the center of it.” The princess’s Mother’s Day portrait slots easily into the already-dense, opaque universe of the Royal Family.

[Read: We haven’t seen the worst of fake news]

Most important, as Hall notes, people have recently lost trust both in the Royal Family as an institution and in the organizations that cover the monarchy. In part due to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s departure from royal life, there is a newfound sense of the royals as conniving and manipulative, and the press plays into this. This trust vacuum, when it collides with a still-new technology such as generative AI, creates the optimal conditions for conspiracy theories to grow. It seems clear, at least in the case of the Royal Family, that the institutions aren’t sure how to handle any of this. It makes sense, then, that two of the biggest “Is it real?” image controversies of the past year have centered on figures from archaic cultural-political organizations: the papacy and the monarchy.

None of these dynamics is particularly new—Adobe Photoshop, the likely culprit of any supposed “manipulation” in the royal portrait, has been around for more than three decades. And although the tools are getting considerably better, the bigger change is cultural. The royal-photo debacle is merely a microcosm of our current moment, where trust in both governing institutions and gatekeeping organizations such as the mainstream press is low. This sensation has been building for some time and was exacerbated by the corrosive political lies of the Trump era.

But synthetic media seems poised to act as an amplifier—a vehicle to exacerbate the misgivings, biases, and gut feelings of anyone with an internet connection. It’s never been easier to collect evidence that sustains a particular worldview and build a made-up world around cognitive biases on any political or pop-culture issue. It’s in this environment that these new tech tools become something more than reality blurrers: They’re chaos agents, offering new avenues for confirmation bias, whether or not they’re actually used.

When I look at Middleton’s portrait and the cascade of memes, posts, and elaborate theories about which elements of the image are real, I’m reminded of the title of a book by the journalist Peter Pomerantsev: Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible. The book is about post-Soviet Russia, where distrust, corruption, and propaganda created a surreal and toxic culture and politics, but the title may as well be describing the events of the past 30 hours. And I fear that it may be an apt descriptor of the months and years to come.

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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Gilad Edelman, a senior editor at The Atlantic who has written about the rising cost of English muffins (and the source of our economic discontent), the stubborn survival of crypto, and the case for weather being the best small-talk topic.

Gilad is a self-described “Letter Boxed head” and a staunch Ben Affleck defender (he recommends The Way Back and—curveball—Zack Snyder’s Justice League as some of the finer examples of Affleck’s talents). He also challenges anybody to find a more reliable actor than Seth Rogen—or to quote a good Oasis lyric.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

The cystic-fibrosis breakthrough that changed everything A looming disaster at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant April cover story: The golden age of American Jews is ending.

The Culture Survey: Gilad Edelman

An actor I would watch in anything: If I’m answering literally, it’s Seth Rogen. By this I don’t mean that he’s my favorite actor, or that he elevates poor material, or that I’ll watch something because he’s in it. But if I’m getting to choose only the actor and not the film, I’ll take my chances with Rogen, simply because he tends to avoid poor material in the first place. (Set aside The Green Hornet; every Hollywood star gets a terrible superhero movie.) If you don’t believe me, check out his IMDb page and pick at random a movie he’s in—you’ll probably be all right. (The Apple TV+ series Platonic, in which he stars opposite Rose Byrne as an immature man-child who must finally grow up—wow, what a twist!—is also highly amusing.)

If, however, I’m answering in the spirit of the question: Are we ready to talk about how underrated Ben Affleck is? Gigli is synonymous with bad cinema, and I won’t defend the embarrassing Air, which was an extended Nike advertisement masquerading as a film. But come on. The guy is phenomenal. He sets the standard for both the world-weary grimace and the cocky smirk. The scenes with Affleck as Bruce Wayne in the ridiculous Zack Snyder’s Justice League are, against the odds, totally watchable—good, even. Need a loathsome, smarmy prick? Affleck. (Mallrats, State of Play, Boiler Room.) Need a soulful, flawed hero wrestling with his demons? Affleck. (The Company Men, The Way Back.) I don’t see why you would need an autistic CPA who is a master of martial arts and close-quarters gunplay, but if you do: Affleck. (The Accountant: improbably entertaining.) He’s more than just the Dunkin’ Donuts meme! [Related: Ben Affleck gives the performance of his career.]

My favorite way of wasting time on my phone: Letter Boxed has never gotten as much love as its better-known siblings in the New York Times games app. I’m convinced this is because most people don’t know the right way to play. In Letter Boxed, you must spell words with letters arranged around the four sides of a square without ever using two letters on the same side consecutively. If you play by the stated rules, which typically ask you to solve by using all of the letters in four to six turns, it’s too easy. What the instructions don’t tell you is that the puzzle can always be solved in only two moves. Real Letter Boxed heads know that’s the real game. Warning: It’s hard! [Related: The New York Times’ new game is genius.]

A cultural product I loved as a teenager and still love, and something I loved but now dislike: Same answer for both: Oasis. When I was in high school, my friends and I would get together in someone’s basement, probably under the influence (sorry, Mom), and belt out Oasis songs at the top of our lungs. Noel Gallagher composed these simple, anthemic melodies and guitar licks, making heavy use of the pentatonic scale, that felt as if they had been etched in stone and handed down on Mount Sinai. His brother, Liam, the front man, sang in an unschooled, high-pitched Mancunian snarl that could be menacing and sweet at the same time.

Then I got a little older and noticed the lyrics. Woof. The typical Oasis lyric is a snatch of portentous, arbitrarily rhyming pseudo-poetry with no thematic connection to the lines before or after it. (Off the top of my head, I can think of multiple “pain / rain” rhymes.) We all know “And after all / You’re my wonderwall,” but that’s just scratching the surface. I want to give more examples, but I’m almost paralyzed by choice. Let’s just look at the opening verse of “Magic Pie,” from the album Be Here Now:

An extraordinary guy
Can never have an ordinary day
He might live the long goodbye
But that is not for me to say
I dig his friends, I dig his shoes
He is just a child with nothing to lose
But his mind, his mind

See what I mean? Once I noticed the vapidity of Oasis’s lyrics, I couldn’t un-notice them. And so, for a long time, Oasis became something I used to love. Then, early on in the pandemic, perhaps in search of musical comfort food, I started listening again. And boy, did Oasis hit the spot. It might just be my personal nostalgia, but I think there’s something about the music itself—unsubtle, grandiose, emotionally immediate—that evokes the feeling of adolescence even if you weren’t a teenager when you first heard it. Not coincidentally, two of their best songs are “Stay Young” and “Live Forever.” I still hate the lyrics, but I try not to let them bother me.

An author I will read anything by: Penelope Lively is up there with the finest prose stylists in the English language. Her novels, which tend to document the inner lives and domestic frustrations of middle-aged Brits coming to terms with life’s disappointments, can be claustrophobic and depressing. But not a word is out of place, and no writer conjures a character’s mental state more convincingly. Like some of my other favorite writers, Lively is obsessed with memory—how it shapes, haunts, and deceives us. If you’re unfamiliar, I recommend beginning with her deeply moving 1987 novel, Moon Tiger. [Related: “A maverick historian,” by Penelope Lively]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: Do people really sit around reading poetry? I don’t, so I’ll cheat and do a song lyric. Since we’ve already trashed one of the worst lyricists (sorry, Noel), now let’s turn to the GOAT. Paul Simon didn’t exactly write “protest” music, but his “American Tune,” recorded on the 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, captured the disillusionment of the Vietnam and Nixon era. It put to music the question of whether the country’s best days were behind it.

“Oh, and it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right / You can’t be forever blessed / Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day / And I’m trying to get some rest,” he sang. Sometimes I take comfort in those lines: Things looked pretty bad 50 years ago, yet America keeps muddling through. At other times, I hear them as a warning. You really can’t be blessed forever.

The Week Ahead

The Academy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and featuring a strong lineup of nominees (airs tonight at 7 p.m. ET on ABC) Manhunt, a limited series about the hunt for John Wilkes Booth after his assassination of Abraham Lincoln (premieres Friday on Apple TV+) Green Frog, by Gina Chung, a fantastical short-story collection that explores survival and Korean American womanhood (out Tuesday)

Essay

Mark Sommerfeld / The New York Times / Redux

Christopher Nolan on the Promise and Peril of Technology

By Ross Andersen

(From 2023)

By the time I sat down with Christopher Nolan in his posh hotel suite not far from the White House, I guessed that he was tired of Washington, D.C. The day before, he’d toured the Oval Office and had lunch on Capitol Hill. Later that night, I’d watched him receive an award from the Federation for American Scientists, an organization that counts Robert Oppenheimer, the subject of Nolan’s most recent film, among its founders …

The award was sitting on an end table next to Nolan, who was dressed in brown slacks, a gray vest, and a navy suit jacket—his Anglo-formality undimmed by decades spent living in Los Angeles. “It’s heavy, and glass, and good for self-defense,” he said of the award, while filling his teacup. I suggested that it may not be the last trophy he receives this winter …

“Don’t jinx me,” he said.

Read the full article.

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Here’s who will win at the 2024 Oscars. If Oppenheimer wins Best Picture, this will be why. What to read ahead of the Oscars A subtle shift shaking up sibling relationships Dad culture has nothing to do with parenting. Shōgun is challenging Hollywood’s most revered stereotype. The haunting of modern pop music Seven books that explain how Hollywood actually works A kind of timeless jazz masterpiece The New York Times’ new game is genius. The tyranny of English It’s time to give up on email.

Catch Up on The Atlantic

The most unusual State of the Union in living memory The Supreme Court is not up to the challenge. Haiti is in crisis.

Photo Album

Children listen to a battery-powered radio receiver that is set on a table in a swimming pool in Washington, D.C., in July 1924. (Buyenlarge / Getty)

These images—which trace the 1924 Summer Olympics, prohibition in the United States, the rise of radio broadcasts, and more—show life exactly one century ago.

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