What happened

Images depicting a picturesque Christmas market, complete with wooden stalls and festive lights, set up within the gates of Buckingham Palace in London, UK, were widely circulated on social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

The fake event was promoted as the palace's first-ever Christmas market by accounts with large followings, most notably the Instagram account @London.Travelers (which reportedly has over 2.5 million followers and is run by a US travel company, Athotel). 

The post has since been deleted. Tourists, including locals and international visitors who had traveled specifically for the event, arrived at the palace only to find the usual security fences, locked gates, and no Christmas market. The disappointment and frustration of those who were duped were shared across social media, confirming the hoax.

The Royal Collection Trust (RCT), which manages the palace's visitor experiences, was compelled to issue a statement clarifying that "there will not be a Christmas market at Buckingham Palace," only a small Christmas pop-up shop inside the Royal Mews.

The actual harms caused were primarily wasted time, travel costs, and emotional frustration for the misled tourists. The incident also contributed to a broader sense of mistrust and confusion regarding the authenticity of widely shared online content.

Why it happened

The incident was a direct result of the increasing sophistication of Generative AI image technology combined with the viral distribution power of unverified social media content.

• Corporate/product transparency limitations: The high-fidelity of the AI images made them difficult to distinguish from real photographs, especially for casual social media users. The images lacked clear, mandatory AI-generated disclaimers or watermarks upon creation or distribution, allowing them to pass as authentic promotional material.

• Accountability limitations: The prominent social media account(s) that shared the image, such as London.Travelers, seemingly did so without proper verification or disclosure that the image was fake, exploiting the excitement of a high-profile, novel event (a market at Buckingham Palace) for engagement or potentially promotional purposes. The lack of platform mechanisms to quickly identify and halt the spread of AI-driven visual misinformation from high-reach accounts contributed significantly to the hoax's success.