'Kill Notice' For Kate Middleton's Mother's Day Photo Explained By Expert

Kensington Palace released a new photo of Kate Middleton which received a "kill notice" from major media outlets just hours after it was published.

On Sunday, the Palace shared a photo of the Princess of Wales to mark Mother's Day in the United Kingdom on X, formerly Twitter. She was all smiles in the snap while surrounded by her three children -- Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5.

However, the Associated Press retracted the photo because it reportedly appeared "manipulated." Aside from AP, other agencies, including Getty, Reuters and AFP, removed the image after closely examining it.

TJ Thomson, an Australian visual media and communication expert at RMIT University, tackled the issue in an interview with Yahoo News Australia, saying it was "very, very suspicious, and very, very risky."

He speculated that the agencies investigated the photo after several netizens claimed it appeared doctored or edited.

"I would anticipate that folks either at AP or colleagues in other newsrooms are probably looking at social media and looking at comments," Thomson explained. "And probably someone noticed that anomaly and mentioned it, and then they probably looked at it closely themselves.. and then issued the kill notice."

The expert said that anyone with eyes would immediately notice the alterations in the photo "just from looking at it" before pointing out some examples.

"The cuff of Princess Charlotte's left sleeve, you can see with the naked eye that something's off with that, it kind of dissolves midway into thin air," he added. "You can also see with naked vision that Princess Kate's right arm, or the right hand, fingers already are quite unnaturally blurred, and same thing with her hair on the right side of her head, also quite blurred compared to the left side of her head."

According to Rebecca English, a royal correspondent for Daily Mail who has been part of the Royal Rota system, the photo was taken by Prince William earlier this week. However, Thomson said it was difficult to determine when the photo in question was actually taken.

"But there are very little ways we can be sure to be honest [if the picture was taken recently]. I tried to do a reverse image search of the photo to see if there were older photos of a similar nature, and I couldn't find any. But that doesn't mean there aren't any, it just means it's not any publicly out there online already," he continued.

The expert noted that the image was "probably more or less real" with a little bit of airbrushing, smoothing and teeth whitening. He said that "the basic components are probably accurate," but there were inconsistencies.

"But it's just a matter of if they are all accurate at the same point in time, at that same location that the photo is claiming it is," he added.

Meanwhile, AP said it issued a "photo kill" on Middleton's image because its editorial standards only allow accurate images, and the outlet "does not use altered or digitally manipulated images."

"At closer inspection, it appears that the source has manipulated the image," the AP's advisory read. "No replacement photo will be sent."