Fake Photos, Dodgy Emails and the Art of Authenticity

Last year, as I prepared for my one-woman show at Victoria Theatre in Halifax, I searched my photo stash for relevant pictures to put on my background slideshow. I have thousands. What I really wanted was a photo of me as a pole dancer. Yes, I really did use to be a pole dancer. But that was in the 1970s, and we were not rich enough for a camera in those days.

What did I do? I resorted to using this new-to-me AI stuff. It wouldn’t create a photo of me actually pole dancing because it said that was against its standards. Indeed. But I did manage to create an image that told the story using AI, Canva and my own photos. It worked.

I knew it wasn’t a real photo. Everyone at the show knew it wasn’t a real photo. Everyone at the talks I’ve delivered since then knows it’s not a real photo.

Looking back at that, I now wonder if I was going against my own standards of not using AI and creating untruths. Clearly, AI has improved dramatically over the last few months, and everyone seems to have the ability to produce very realistic but fake photos. When I do the scrolling on social media (yes, I am ashamed to say I do that), I find myself doubting everything now. My trust has evaporated.

It reminded me of an incident in the tearoom a few years ago. One of our regular customers loved bringing in his amazing photographs to show us. There was one in particular that was a harbour scene. I can still see it—the light shimmering on the water, the coloured sails on the masts waving in the breeze. I told him how wonderful it was. The following day, he brought another photo in. It was the same scene, but he’d changed the colour on some of the sails because he thought they looked better. I told him he’d spoiled the whole thing for me now because I wanted to know that what I was looking at in a photo was the actual thing. I wanted to be able to go to that harbour and spot the boats and say, “Oh, that’s from that photo I saw.” For me, it wasn’t just a good photo, it was a record of reality. As soon as he adapted it, it was no longer real for me.

And that was long before AI. Now we have to assume that a photo is fake until it’s proved real.

However, with the World Cup underway, Florence’s human father-in-law-to-be (long story) created a photo of Florence and her Olly wearing Scottish football tops. I thought it even funnier when he changed Florence’s shirt to be an England top. Mr M didn’t.

Then somehow Florence’s HFILTB got hold of a photo of Mr M. I might have sent it to him. Was it picked purposely because of the star

tled look Mr M was wearing, along with his lovely kilt? Possibly. The adapted photo was, for me, beyond funny. I actually laughed out loud when it landed in my WhatsApp message. Mr M was now sporting a full England kit: socks, kilt, and shirt. I howled.

I sent the photo to Mr M and was advised that divorce papers were in the post. But later that night we had a laugh about it, and he asked how many people had commented on my post. I told him I’d not posted it as I didn’t know if he’d find it funny.

Feeling that was almost like getting permission to post it, I did so. I thought it was obvious it was an AI-generated one. But others, including my son, thought it was real. And when I compared the original photo and the AI photo, I realised I’d been fooled too. In the original, he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt; in the new one, a short-sleeved shirt. He even has hairs on his arms! I just assumed I was looking at my husband’s arms. So what was meant to be a joke turned out to be that I’d fooled people, myself included. That’s how easy it is.

That photo could have caused offence to somebody else in that situation. I thought it was hilarious, but Mr M has a different sense of humour to me. After I had checked that Mr M did laugh about it, even though the joke was on him, I was brave enough to post it. If it had made him angry or upset, the humour for me would have been spoiled, and I’d be upset with myself that I’d upset him. Does everyone think that way before adapting and then posting images?

As an author, I’m always hoping for an email to arrive telling me one of my books has become a bestseller, that I’ve become rich and famous and can pay for Evie’s repairs without batting an eyelid. I never take my phone upstairs with me at night, so I always check it when I go downstairs in the morning to see if it’s arrived. Today, I received an exciting email:

‘Hello Debra Murphy, I hope this message finds you well. I would like to confirm whether you are the author of the book titled The Magical Tearoom on the Hill: Recipes, Tales and Adventures. I would greatly appreciate your confirmation at your convenience. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your reply. Kind regards,’

I don’t like using my phone to look at important stuff, as you don’t see the whole thing. So I enjoyed my porridge with the blueberries that were expanding and turning the milk a slight tinge of blue. Scrummy.

Then I fired up my computer to see when I was going to be famous.

Years ago, when computers were becoming the norm, I was learning how to use the mail merge facility. It was a complicated affair. But I sussed it out and sent out a whole load of letters for my boss addressed to all the people he wanted to know about his new fabulous computer software organisation and how he could help them with their tedious computer tasks.

Except I hadn’t learned enough. Each letter was correctly addressed to the person, but that full name in the address was repeated in the salutation bit. So it read, ‘Dear Rosemary Fullham’ (fake name) rather than ‘Dear Rosemary.’

So when I looked at my exciting email, my alarm bells were ringing loudly when I read Dear Debra Murphy. Yes, this was a marketing email. But it could have been somebody really wanting to know if I was the author because they were going to make me famous. Couldn’t it?

Then I looked at it again. Now I started to wonder if it was the police. Are you Debra Murphy? What had I done wrong?

The more I looked, the more irritated I was. The company name. The ‘Writers Best Friend’ (name made up again). What I didn’t make up was the missing apostrophe in the name. So now I had an email in which somebody had ruined the salutation, the name had a missing apostrophe, and there was no explanation as to why he/she wanted to know whether I was Debra Murphy.

So I ignored it.

Later that day, I received a text message. Exactly the same.

I ignored it.

Now I think about it, the email is now irritating me. They saw something about me, thought they could earn money from me, so sent me a brief email. Not enough for me to go oooh look, somebody wants to know if I wrote that. But it might be enough for a first-time author or a writer not yet published who might not have had the pleasure of 10 emails a day telling them what a wonderful writer they are and how their writing is so inspiring that they might fall for this and get sucked into whatever is being offered - probably at a huge cost to the poor author.

Authenticity is the key for me. It’s a bit like my Debra and Florence Considers Posts and my blogs. Nobody tells me what to write. Nobody handed me a topic this morning — an email landed, I noticed the phrasing was off, and somewhere in there my brain quietly connected it to a photo from months back and a customer’s sailboats from years ago.

I shared with Mr M a post on LinkedIn saying, ‘If all the people contacting me about how wonderful my book was on Amazon had actually bought my book, I’d be an Amazon best seller by now.’ I totally got that. Other people might not get the joke. I had to explain it to Mr M.

He asked if I got lots of emails like that. I rolled my eyes. That made me realise how much of this stuff we just absorb and filter without even mentioning it anymore, because it’s become background noise rather than news. I don’t tell Mr M about every dodgy email because it’s not remarkable to me. That’s its own kind of authenticity problem: the people closest to you don’t always know what you’re quietly deflecting all day, because you’ve stopped registering it as worth reporting.

Something to remember is that checking only happens after suspicion, so the real skill is noticing what should trigger that suspicion in the first place. Sleeve length. Dear Debra Murphy. Missing apostrophe.

I hope you have enjoyed the blog, and please leave a comment so I know it's not only me that reads it.