Kate Middleton's 'Manipulated' Photo Not From Vogue Cover, Experts Say

Kate Middleton's doctored Mother's Day photo didn't involve her Vogue cover.

The Princess of Wales admitted editing the photo that Kensington Palace released to mark Mother's Day on Sunday. Some netizens claimed she used her face from a magazine cover photo in the controversial image.

"[M]y analysis of the Kate Middleton photo saga is that they took her face from the Vogue cover she did years ago and edited it in," one netizen shared on X, formerly Twitter.

AI and Photoshop experts dismissed such claims. According to them, the Duchess of Cambridge did a "five-minute job" to make the "perfect family picture," the Daily Mail reported.

"So many people here who have no idea what you can do with AI and photoshop today. This was a 5-minute job on a low-res file," Texas-based photojournalist Jonas Peterson said.

Lee Walton, an imaging technician at DMG Newspapers, also shared the same sentiment. He stressed that the theories were outrageous, assuring the netizens that no body parts were replaced in the photo uploaded by the Palace.

"Whatever the online conspiracy theorists would have you believe, however, I can categorically say no one's head or hands have been entirely replaced," he said.

Eliot Higgins, a journalist and founder of Bellingcat, also laughed off the face-swapping claims on X.

"These people are playing spot the difference and losing," said the Bellingcat boss, whose forensic analysis expertise reportedly led to the identification of the men Putin allegedly sent to poison Sergei Skripal with Novichok, per the Daily Mail.

"There's so many minor differences, like the reflection of the light in her pupils, the light and shadow on her face, the teeth visible, wrinkles, etc., etc., that it's clearly just a photo of the same woman from about the same angle, not the same exact photo," he wrote. "It hurts my brain that I even have to point this out."

Higgins also shared another tweet from Bill Billson featuring a side-by-side photo of Middleton's Vogue cover and the recent photo. Billson said it was not a "pixel-perfect fit" and pointed out the differences he noticed in the photos.

"The reflections in her eyes are different, eyebrows are different, smile is different etc.," Billson wrote.

"Here's a close up which shows a lot of the differences, such as the reflection in her eye, lower teeth being clearer in the smile, more wrinkles and lines, differences with the eyelashes, etc.," Higgins added.

TJ Thomson, an Australian visual media and communication expert at RMIT University, also addressed the issue after the Associated Press issued a "kill notice." According to him, the image was "probably more or less real" with a little bit of airbrushing, smoothening and teeth whitening.