Project P9 — Generate on Brief

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” — Exodus 20:16 (ESV)

Chapter: 9 — Creating with AI: Image and Video Due: End of Week 9 Submit: A link to a shared folder or PDF portfolio (Google Drive / OneDrive / a single PDF) containing your image set, your prompt log, your completed rights checklist, and your write-up. Not GitHub — deliverables are documents and images, not code. See Appendix A for accounts and submission mechanics. Allowed tools: Any consumer AI image tool reachable from a browser or phone — GPT Image 2 (in ChatGPT), Adobe Firefly, Google Imagen (in Gemini), Midjourney, Flux, or similar. Free tiers are fine. A word processor and a way to take screenshots. (Tool directory: Appendix B.) AI policy (Phase 2): You are creating with AI here — that is the assignment. But you own the verdict. AI generates the pixels; you iterate the prompt, decide the rights, and write the disclosure. Every deliverable that touches AI carries an honest AI usage note (tool + version, what you iterated, the rights/disclosure call). AI is an assistant, not an authority.

The Setup

You are Sam, and you do a little of everything at Fair Oaks Garden Center — a friendly, third-generation neighborhood plant nursery. You run the register, you answer the phone, you water the ferns on hot afternoons. This spring, you also got handed the marketing, because you’re “the one who’s good with the computer.”

The Spring Open House is the first Saturday in May, and there’s no budget for a photographer this year. The owner heard you can “make pictures with AI now” and asked you to try. She handed you a one-page brief and said: “Make it feel like us — warm, local, real. And don’t get us in trouble.”

That last sentence is the whole job. Anyone can push the button and get a pretty picture. A professional produces images that are on brief, that the business may actually use, and that tell the truth about who Fair Oaks is. You are going to do all three — and you’re going to document your judgment so the owner can trust the result. You are the witness whose name goes on these pictures.

Setup (the starter)

This chapter ships two starter files in code/. Read both before you begin:

• code/image-brief.txt — the creative brief from Fair Oaks: the three required deliverables, their aspect ratios and subjects, the mood/look, and the do’s and don’ts. This is your spec. Fulfilling it is the Normal tier.
• code/image-rights-checklist.txt — an image-rights & disclosure worksheet. You fill one out for your set before you “hand it back.” It walks you through commercial-use rights, likeness, the honesty test, and provenance/disclosure.

Copy both into your own working folder. Make them yours.

Learning Targets

You will demonstrate that you can:

• Translate a creative brief into directed image prompts using the five levers — subject, style, lighting, composition, aspect ratio.
• Iterate a prompt deliberately (v1 → v2 → v3), changing one lever at a time, and explain what each change did.
• Produce an on-brand set of images that fit a real brief’s mood, palette, and constraints.
• Make and defend a rights and commercial-use decision using a checklist — tool choice, likeness, and copyright.
• Attach honest disclosure and understand the provenance (Content Credentials / watermark) on what you made.

Normal Tier

Goal: Produce the three on-brief images from code/image-brief.txt, document how you got there, and hand back an honest rights-and-disclosure decision.

Required features

1. The image set. Produce the three required deliverables from the brief:
   • a hero image at 4:5 (portrait),
   • a social square at 1:1, and
   • an email banner at 16:9 (landscape). Export each (or take a clean, full-resolution screenshot). Each must match its subject and aspect ratio in the brief, and respect the do’s/don’ts (no recognizable real faces, no logos, no garbled baked-in text).
2. A prompt log (prompt-log.txt or .docx). For each deliverable, show your prompt v1 → v2 → v3 (at least three versions of at least one deliverable; the others may show fewer if they landed sooner), with a one-line note per step on the single lever you changed and why. Head it with the tool + version you used (e.g. “Adobe Firefly 4, mid-2026”).
3. The rights checklist (rights.txt). A completed copy of code/image-rights-checklist.txt for the set, ending with a verdict line (publish as-is / publish with disclosure / do not use) and your name as the accountable human.
4. A disclosure line. The exact caption or note you recommend Fair Oaks attach when they use these — and a sentence on whether the exported files carry Content Credentials / provenance.
5. A short write-up (writeup.docx or .pdf, ~400–700 words). What you made, which tool and why, where the prompts fought you and how you iterated, and your honest AI usage note. Tell the truth about what worked and what didn’t.

Normal-tier rubric (out of 100)

Medium Tier (+up to 25% extra credit)

Push past “it works” into “it’s good.”

1. A second variation set. Produce an alternate version of one deliverable aimed at a different channel or audience — e.g. a 9:16 phone-story version, or a version tuned for retirees vs. first-time balcony gardeners. Put the two side by side and say, in a sentence, which you’d recommend and why.
2. Edit, don’t re-roll. Take one image with a single fixable flaw and repair it with the tool’s edit / inpainting feature (fix a hand, clear a corner for text, remove a stray object) rather than regenerating from scratch. Show before and after, and note what the edit preserved that a re-roll would have lost.
3. Two tools, one prompt. Run the same prompt through two different tools (e.g. GPT Image 2 vs. Firefly). Compare the results on quality and on commercial-rights posture (does either grant commercial use or indemnification?). Note it as a mid-2026 snapshot.

Hard Tier (+up to 25% additional extra credit)

This is the judgment no image tool can generate for you, and it is graded as such.

Write RECOMMENDATION.docx (one page, addressed to the Fair Oaks owner) that makes and defends a clear publish / do-not-publish decision for your image set. You must:

• For each image, state whether Fair Oaks may publish it commercially — and under what disclosure — or must not use it, and why, in one or two sentences each.
• Ground every call in the real questions from this chapter: commercial-use terms of the tool you used (and whether the plan grants them / offers indemnification), likeness (does it depict a recognizable real person?), honesty (could a viewer mistake it for a real photo of a real thing?), and provenance/disclosure (how will you label it, and what happens if the metadata is stripped?).
• Name the failure mode you are accepting for anything you approve, and the human who answers for it (you).
• Tie the recommendation explicitly to the spine rule — you choose the tool, you own the verdict — and to Exodus 20:16: where would publishing an image cross from honest illustration into bearing false witness?

A memo that says “publish everything” or “publish nothing” fails. The grade is in the discrimination — showing you can tell a safe, honest, publishable image from one that would mislead or expose the business, and defend the line in writing.

Submission

Put everything in one shared folder or a single PDF portfolio (Google Drive, OneDrive, or an exported PDF) and submit the link per Appendix A. Suggested contents:

project-09/
  images/
    hero-4x5.(png/jpg)
    social-1x1.(png/jpg)
    banner-16x9.(png/jpg)
  prompt-log.txt            (or .docx)
  rights.txt                (completed checklist)
  writeup.docx              (or .pdf)
  RECOMMENDATION.docx       (Hard tier only)

Do not submit to GitHub — you are a professional making documents, not a programmer. Use only images you generated for this project; if any real person appears, do not submit without their written consent (and say so).

Hints (Read Before You Begin)

• Read the brief twice before you prompt once. The do’s/don’ts (no faces, no logos, no baked-in text, leave space for words) will save you three bad generations.
• Change one lever at a time. If you rewrite the whole prompt every round, you won’t know which change helped. Iteration is a science experiment, not a slot machine.
• Set the aspect ratio before you generate, not after. Designing a wide banner and cropping it to a square throws away half the composition.
• “Almost right” means edit, not re-roll. When one flaw is the only problem, fix that region and keep the rest.
• Do the rights check on the tool you actually used, on the plan you’re on. Rights follow the specific tool and tier, and free vs. paid often differ. Keep the receipt (tool, version, plan, date).
• A disclosure caption costs nothing and protects everyone. When in doubt, label it.

What Mastery Looks Like (Beyond the Rubric)

A mastered submission is one where I can open your folder and see a decision-maker, not a button-pusher. The three images look like Fair Oaks — warm, local, honest — and your prompt log shows me how you got there on purpose. Your rights checklist has a real verdict, not a shrug. And your RECOMMENDATION.docx tells me, image by image, which ones the owner may safely publish and which would cross a line — with a reason I’d stake the nursery’s name on. The pretty pictures are table stakes. The judgment and the honesty are the project.

Coach’s Note — The temptation this week is to chase the most impressive image. Resist it. The best submission is not the flashiest — it’s the one that is on brief, honestly usable, and clearly labeled. A stunning image the business can’t legally use, or that quietly misleads a customer, is worth less than a plain, honest one they can publish on Monday. Impressive is easy now. Trustworthy is the professional skill.

When You’re Done (a short checklist)

• All three images delivered at the correct aspect ratios (4:5, 1:1, 16:9).
• Prompt log shows real v1→v2→v3 iteration and names the tool + version.
• No recognizable real faces, no logos, no garbled baked-in text.
• Rights checklist completed, with a verdict line and your name on it.
• A disclosure caption written; provenance/Content Credentials addressed.
• Write-up is honest and includes the AI usage note.
• (Hard) RECOMMENDATION.docx makes a per-image publish decision and ties it to Exodus 20:16.
• No real person depicted without written consent.

A theological footnote. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16, ESV). This project hands you the power to make a picture that looks exactly like the truth — and then asks you to be a true witness with it. The commandment does not forbid the flyer, the illustration, the imagined morning light. It forbids passing off the unreal as real to a neighbor’s cost: the fake “customer,” the storefront that isn’t yours, the result you can’t deliver. Fair Oaks’ neighbors — the families who trust that a local nursery is what it says it is — are the ones the Eighth Commandment is protecting when you write that disclosure line. The tool cannot bear false witness; it has no neighbor and no oath. You do. Make true images. Label the rest. Put your name on a testimony you would defend on Sunday.

See you next week.