How to Give an AI Your Material Without It Changing It

An AI does the background well. What it can't generate is what's real: your product, your team and your process.

Give an AI something real and forbid it to invent. That's the starting point; the result is decided by your review.

The rule has three lines. They apply every time, in this order:

• Line one. Your real photo is the only reference. The AI doesn't get a description of the product. It gets the product.
• Line two. The AI changes the surroundings, never the product. Background, light, scene: yes. Shape, color, logo, text, number of objects: no.
• Line three. Someone checks the logo and the text letter by letter before publishing. One person, with the original beside it.

Three things can't be generated, and each one gets the three lines with its own twist:

• The real photo of the product or the work.
• The real face of the team.
• The real process of how it's done.

Haven't read the article that goes with this guide? Start there. This guide holds what didn't fit: the rule worked out for each case, the prompts, the review, and what to do when something is missing.

To keep count as you read, use the Real Materials Checklist: a sheet where you note, piece by piece, what real material you have and what's still pending.

What to provide. Your real photo, in the best quality you have, with the whole product in view and no odd cropping. If the product carries a name painted on the hull, a logo, a registration number or a sign, the photo has to show them legibly. If you have several angles, upload the one you'll use plus one more for support.

What to ask the AI. To keep the product exactly as it appears in the photo and to change only the surroundings you name: background, light, sky, water.

What you forbid. Changing shape, color, logo, any text, number of objects, and proportions. Adding things to the product. Redrawing the name on the hull.

What you check before publishing. Logo and text letter by letter, with the original photo beside it. Then hull shape, hardware, color and the number of objects. The full procedure is in Part 6.

Prompt to copy:

I'm giving you a real photo of [product: for example, a white-hulled fishing boat with its name painted on the bow].
That photo is the only reference. Do not use any description of mine to redraw the product.

Change only the surroundings: [the background and light you want: for example, warm sunset over the channel, calm water].

Do not change, redraw or add anything to the product: shape, color, proportions, logo, name, text, number of objects and hardware details stay exactly as in the photo.
If you can't keep the text or the logo exactly as is, leave that area untouched and tell me.
If something in the photo isn't clear, tell me what's missing instead of making it up.

An invented face isn't your team. Your customers walk into the shop and the mechanic doesn't look like the photo.

What to provide. The real team photo, with the people who actually work there, and a written permission from each person in it (see Part 7). Also provide the correct caption: each name and each job title, written by you.

What to ask the AI. To improve only the scene - the wall behind and the sky - without touching the light on the people. To keep each person exactly as they appear.

What you forbid. Changing faces, age, weight, skin tone, hairstyle, uniform, the number of people, or the position of hands. Adding people. Removing anyone.

Prompt to copy:

I'm giving you a real photo of [team: for example, the staff of a boat repair shop, five people in front of the bay door].
That photo is the only reference. The people are real and must look exactly as they are.

Change only the surroundings: [what you want: for example, a cleaner background, without touching the light on the people].

Do not change any face, body, hairstyle, age, clothing, uniform, logo or text. Do not add, remove or move people. Do not change the number of people or the position of hands.
If you can't do it without touching the people, don't do it and tell me why.
Do not write names or job titles: I'll add them myself afterward.

This one is easy to invent and hard to spot at a glance. An AI might draw someone sanding a hull with a tool that isn't used that way, or a step that your shop does in a different order.

What to provide. The real process, in your words and with your photos. A real photo of each step. The steps in the order they're actually done.

What to ask the AI. To organize, clean up and present what you provided: line up the photos and write the caption using only words you wrote. The AI doesn't modify the photos of the steps: they're the evidence of your work.

What you forbid. Inventing steps, tools, materials, times, standards or results. Reordering the steps. Filling a missing step with one that "sounds reasonable."

Prompt to copy:

I'm giving you the real steps of [process: for example, prepping a hull before painting], exactly as [who: the shop's technician] does them, with a real photo of each step.

Your task: [what you want: for example, line up the photos and write a short caption for each step].

Use only my words and my photos. Do not modify the photos. Do not add steps, tools, materials, times or standards that I haven't written. Do not change the order.
If a step has no photo or text from me, mark it "pending" and leave the space empty. Don't draw it or describe it yourself.

It can happen: you have the photo of the boat but not the engine. You have the technician but nobody photographed them working. The rule is short: mark what's missing "pending," then go get it. Never invent it.

• Write it down on the checklist. On the Real Materials Checklist, that material's box stays at "pending," with the name of whoever is getting it.
• Don't publish that piece. A piece with a hole doesn't go out.
• Go get it. A photo of the engine takes a moment with a phone. A process step gets photographed the next time the technician does it.
• If you can't get it, change the piece. Use a cover with your real boat and a painted background - don't publish a scene with something that isn't yours.

Before publishing any piece made with AI, one person goes through it with the original beside them, in this order and without rushing. Five good minutes cover one piece.

Minute one: the logo. Put the original photo and the new one side by side. Look at the logo in both. Same shapes, same colors, same position? A logo that's "almost the same" is a wrong logo.

Minute two: the text, letter by letter. Read each letter of the hull name, the sign, the registration, the uniform, the placard. Don't read it as a phrase: spell it. Look for a swapped letter or an invented word that looks real.

Minute three: shape, color and count. Does the hull have the same length and the same curve? Is the color your product's? Is the number of objects the same?

Minute four: hands and edges. Count the fingers. Look at where the product meets the background: that's where seams and shadows that don't belong hide.

Minute five: the text that goes with it. Read the caption and the description. Every claim (a material, a time, a standard, a name) has to be in your real material. Whatever isn't gets deleted or marked "pending."

If something doesn't match, don't fix it with another blind attempt. Send the original photo again with the same prompt and one more line naming the error exactly. Then review again from minute one.

If a person appears, get written permission from whoever is in it. This guide doesn't say what the law requires in any given place or case - check with whoever advises you.

What the permission should say, in plain words:

• Who the person is (full name).
• What the photo will be used for.
• That they agree to the photo being published and to the background and light being edited with AI.
• Date and signature, on paper or in a message they write to you themselves and that you keep.

What you do with it. Store it next to the original photo, under a matching file name. What you don't do. You don't take a photo of someone without their knowing, and you don't ask an AI for a face "like" a real person's to avoid asking permission.

Your photo is one. The text that goes with it isn't. If your business talks to customers in English and in Spanish, every caption, every spec sheet and every description of a process is delivered written in each language, natively. Text translated word for word is filler in a different language.

• Write each version from what you mean to say, not from the other version.
• The real facts stay identical in both: hull name, registration, model, technician's name and standard.
• Ask the AI to write in each language separately, with your material and your words as the base.
• The text in each language is written or checked by a native speaker of that language.

Prompt to copy:

From this real material of mine: [paste your text here in the language you wrote it: name, facts, steps].
Write the caption in [English] and, separately, in [Spanish], each the way someone from [place, for example: South Florida] would naturally say it.
Do not translate one version into the other. Do not add facts that aren't in my material.
Proper names, registration numbers and standards stay identical in both versions.
If a fact is missing to complete a version, write "pending" in that spot.

• It doesn't guarantee the result will come out right. It narrows what the AI can change; it doesn't eliminate it. That's why the review exists.
• It doesn't replace a photo shoot when you have no photos. If the real material doesn't exist, the fix is to get it.
• It doesn't say which image tool to use. The prompts work for any, and none is recommended here.
• It doesn't settle legal questions. Written permission is a good habit, not an opinion about what the law requires.

One piece, one real photo, one prompt. Pick the one you use most (your site's cover photo, the team photo, or the step-by-step of your service), copy the prompt for the matching case, change what's in brackets and run the five-minute review.

The note to fill in

Piece: ______________________ · Where it's published: ______________

What can't be generated here: product or work / team face / process

Real photo provided (only reference): yes / pending (who gets it: ____________)

Off limits to touch: shape / color / logo / text / number of objects / people

If people appear: written permission from each person, stored next to the photo / pending

Five-minute review, original beside it: logo / text letter by letter / shape, color and count / hands and edges / caption

Text in both languages: native English / native Spanish / identical facts in both

Who reviewed: ______________________

Do one thing today. Open the product photo you use most, set it next to the text that goes with it, and read the logo letter by letter. If anything differs from the original, that's where you start.

For the full map of how the parts of your online presence fit together, read the five disciplines of SEO.