Does a photo show Prince Harry kneeling at Prince William's feet, apologizing to his brother and accepting a new title? No, that's not true: Multiple AI detectors found that this image was 100 percent likely to be AI generated. Lead Stories found no credible evidence that this string of events occurred.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here) on December 10, 2024. The caption read:
'I'm sorry, brother. Please forgive me,' Prince Harry cried as he returned to the palace after five years, kneeling at William's feet. He accepted a new title... See more below👇👇
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Dec 11 16:34:23 2024 UTC)
The claim features three photos. The larger one on the left shows Prince Harry kneeling in front of Prince William. On top of that is Prince William supposedly embracing his brother while crying. On the right is Prince Harry seemingly wiping a tear from his face with one finger.
Lead Stories used the University of Buffalo's Deep-Fake-O-Meter to see if the two images on the left were AI generated. For the picture of Prince Harry kneeling, multiple detectors concluded there was a 100 percent likelihood that the images were AI generated. Evidence of this is below:
(Source: Zinc.cse.buffalo.edu screenshot taken on Wed Dec 11 16:31:27 2024 UTC)
And below are the results of the photo of the brothers embracing. Again, multiple detectors showed there was a 100 percent likelihood that it was AI generated:
(Source: Zinc.cse.buffalo.edu screenshot taken on Wed Dec 11 16:37:10 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories reverse image searched the image on the right and could not find any relevant results for the source of the image. Two of our searches showed no results at all. One search yielded general photos of Prince Harry, but none that matched our input exactly. Evidence of that is here, here and here (archived here, here and here, respectively).
A Google News search for articles reporting on Prince Harry returning to the United Kingdom, apologizing to Prince William and seeking a new royal title did not yield any substantive evidence that this post was legitimate (archived here). Our search resulted in one article from E! News talking about Prince Harry's autobiography, "Spare."
Lead Stories has reached out to the royal family and will update this article if a relevant response is received.
Other Lead Stories articles about claims involving Prince Harry are here. More Lead Stories articles about claims involving Prince William are here.
