Edinburgh Law School PhD student writes analysis piece for the Scotsman about the royal Mother’s Day photo
Fri 22 March 2024

Following up on the Princess of Wales’ Mother’s Day photo, Edinburgh Law School PhD student, Emily Asgari, recently wrote an article for the Scotsman discussing the implications of the increasing availability of AI for journalism and the news ecosystem.
Most of the discussion surrounding the withdrawal of a digitally manipulated family photograph taken by Princess Catherine focused either on her role in editing the image or the technology that enabled it. However, what were the role and obligations of the media that allowed the image to be published in the first place? In the article, Emily asks how news agencies should respond to the increasing availability of AI editing tools to the wider public, and how regulations like the EU AI Act can help in facilitating and reclaiming the gatekeeper function of the media in an age of user-generated submissions that may or may not have been altered by AI.
Emily writes: “What we should take away from this story is a recognition of a need for established media to re-evaluate their relationship with content produced by the general public and to the general public, and a need for reflection by all of us on how we all now share responsibility in the creation and maintenance of a trustworthy information eco-system.”
Emily Asgari is a PhD student at Edinburgh Law School’s SCRIPT Centre. Her PhD research, titled ‘An Examination of Deepfakes’ Impact on Truth Through a Legal Comparative and Historical Study of Visual Media Manipulation’, is supervised by Dr Paolo Cavaliere and Professor Burkhard Schafer.