Audio of Princess Anne talking about Queen Camilla is AI

A video which has been viewed millions of times on Facebook appears to show Princess Anne speaking about Queen Camilla and saying she will “never bow” to her.

The footage, which has been circulating widely on the social media site, is a compilation of clips of Princess Anne, Queen Camilla and other members of the Royal Family, such as the late Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles.

A voice speaking over the top of the video, which is accompanied by background music, seems to resemble that of Princess Anne and appears to roughly line up with some of the clips of her speaking.

During the video the speaker makes a number of comments about Queen Camilla, and says that “as long as I am alive, I will be her nightmare”, adding “I am Princess Anne and from beginning to end, I have never acknowledged Camilla’s status”.

One caption with the video says: “Princess Anne announces she will never bow to camilla [sic].”

However, this isn’t a real recording of Princess Anne speaking, and the videos use deepfake audio of her, created with artificial intelligence (AI).

While many comments under one clip do recognise that this is an AI-creation, with almost 5,000 shares on one version, there appear to be some users taking this content at face value.

We contacted Professor Hany Farid, who specialises in digital forensics and image analysis at the University of California, Berkeley, about the video.

He told us: “This is a poorly executed fake. The audio is completely disconnected from the video in the parts where you can see Princess Anne.

“In addition, after separating the background music from the voice, I analyzed the voice with our models trained to distinguish real from AI-generated voices. These models find traces of AI generation, adding to the evidence.”

We also compared the audio to a recent speech delivered by Princess Anne, in which her cadence and speaking pattern is different to that in the viral video.

Additionally we can find no credible reports of her ever having made these comments, which would have generated significant news interest had they been aired publicly.

Full Fact has debunked a number of deepfake audio clips which have gained traction online, including ones that mimic Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and President Donald Trump.

Audio-only deepfakes are often harder to debunk than those that use AI imagery, as they often give fewer potential AI slip-ups to look out for and it’s harder to know exactly how they were faked, but we’ve written a helpful guide with tips on things to be wary of if you suspect an audio clip might be made with AI.