Useful images

Imagine is not a poster mill. This lesson is how you make a still that does a job — a briefing card, a process picture, a listing frame — and how you refuse the generations that will get you in trouble.

Why this matters

A pretty picture is cheap. A picture a crew can use in two minutes is not. Most first Imagine prompts fail the same way a vague chat fails: “make it look professional.” You get stock fog, a fake handshake, and a skyline that is not your county.

The other failure is worse. Imagine will, if you let it, draw a person. If that person is a coworker, a student, a client, or anyone whose photo you fed it, you have made a likeness. xAI’s rules, and the law in more than one place, treat non-consensual intimate or impersonating images as prohibited. This course goes further for work: you do not generate a real person you do not have consent to depict. Not “just to see.” Not in a hard hat “for the slide.” Not a public official’s face on a joke sign.

You will also spend usage. Imagine draws from the same weekly pool as chat. A work still is worth it. Fifteen stylistic rerolls are not.

Teach

Open Imagine from grok.com (Imagine in the nav, or grok.com/imagine). You can also ask for an image inside a chat. For this lesson, keep a chat thread next to Imagine: the thread holds the prompt card; Imagine holds the pixels.

Start with the job, not the aesthetic.

A work-useful still usually wants to be one of these:

• a briefing card (site, sequence, hazards, one map-like frame)
• a process picture (four panels, left to right, what happens in the shop)
• a listing or slide frame (empty space for type you will add yourself)
• a diagram (not a photograph of a real facility you do not have the right to invent)
• a before / after concept of an object or landscape, not of a person

Write the prompt as constraints:

• Job. What decision or action this image supports.
• Audience. Who is looking, and from how far (phone, print, shop wall).
• Contents. What must be readable. Count the objects. Name the viewpoint.
• Must not appear. Real faces, real logos you do not own, readable fake license plates, fake safety stamps, anyone under 18, sexualized anything.
• Frame. Aspect ratio that matches the use (16:9 slide, 1:1 card, 4:5 print).
• Finish. “Flat graphic,” “field photograph, overcast, no cinematic grade,” “blueprint-style diagram.” One finish. Not five adjectives.

Then generate once. Change one thing. Generate again. The third pass is for a specific defect (unreadable label, extra person, wrong season), not for “make it cooler.”

Likeness and consent, even on a still with no video:

• Do not upload a photo of someone else to “put them in the scene.”
• Do not describe a recognizable living person (name, unique face, unique uniform plus name tape).
• If the job needs a human figure, specify an invented adult: “unidentifiable crew, faces turned away or cropped, no name tapes.”
• If the figure is you, that is your likeness. You may use it. Say so in the prompt card.
• Do not undress, sexualize, or “swap clothes onto” anyone. xAI forbids undressing or nudifying real people and non-consensual intimate imagery. This course forbids the cute versions of the same request.
• Do not fake a company’s mark, a stamp, a signature, or a credential.

Generated images carry a Grok watermark. Leave it. Removing provenance is against xAI’s policy and, in some places, the law. If a client cannot live with a watermark, Imagine was a sketch — rebuild the graphic in a tool you control.

As of August 2026, Imagine on grok.com is the consumer door (the Imagine API is Pathway C). If your plan blocks generation, finish the prompt card, try Imagine, and keep the limit message. Do not invent a PNG in another app and call it Grok.

Worked example

A field lead needs a one-page tailboard visual for a Thursday inspection: gate, overhead line, hold point at the transformer pad, radio check. No real substation photo. No real faces.

She starts a thread named Thu inspection visual and writes the job in four lines. Grok turns that into a prompt:

Top-down simple site diagram, not a photograph. Gravel lot, chain-link gate at south, single overhead line along the east fence, transformer pad marked as HOLD, radio-check box at the gate. Flat muted graphic, labeled in large plain type: GATE, LINE, HOLD, RADIO. No people, no faces, no logos, no utility company marks, no readable street names. Landscape 16:9, empty top band for a title I will set later.

First image: three extra workers and a fake logo on the gate. She does not shrug. Second prompt: “Same diagram. Remove all people and all marks. Keep the four labels.” Third: the HOLD box is too small; she asks only to enlarge that label.

She now has a still she can put under a projector. She also has a prompt card she can reuse next Thursday. She did not upload yesterday’s crew photo. She did not ask Imagine to “make Mike stand by the pad.”

Your turn

Open grok.com and Imagine. New chat thread named after the still. The still must be for work you actually have this month — briefing, process, listing frame, diagram, slide. Not a celebrity. Not a joke about a coworker. Not a nude. Not a logo lockup for a brand you do not own.

Exercise a6-l01-e1

Copy-ready prompt

I am in Grok Mastery (Russell Tech), Pathway A, lesson A6 — useful images.

Interview me with exactly five short questions, one at a time:
1) What job will this still do (briefing card, process picture, listing/slide frame, diagram, other)?
2) Who looks at it, and on what (phone, print, projector)?
3) What must be readable in the frame? List the objects.
4) Confirm: no real person's face or body, no photo I do not own, no logo I do not have rights to. If I hesitate, stop and tell me to pick a different still.
5) Aspect ratio and finish (flat graphic, field photo style, blueprint, other).

After I answer, write a Prompt Card with exactly these labeled lines:
- Job:
- Audience and surface:
- Contents:
- Must not appear (always include: no real likeness without consent, no minors, no sexualized content, no fake credentials or logos):
- Imagine prompt (one block I can paste):
- Iteration 2 prompt (change one defect):
- Iteration 3 prompt (change one defect):
- Likeness call: "No third-party likeness" or "My own likeness, my consent" — nothing else is allowed.
- Session stamp: today's date and "This prompt card was written by Grok in this thread."

Do not invent objects I did not name. If I ask for a real coworker, client, student, or public figure, refuse and ask for an invented or faceless figure.

Paste the Imagine prompt. Generate. Run at least two iterations (three frames or a documented limit message). Then send:

I generated the still. Defects I saw: [one or two lines].
Rewrite only the final Imagine prompt. Keep the Prompt Card labels. Refresh the session stamp: today's date and "This prompt card was written by Grok in this thread."

Artifact to paste

Paste, in this order:

1. The final Prompt Card with session stamp.
2. What you generated: three short captions (v1, v2, v3) describing the frame, or v1 plus the exact limit / blocked message Imagine showed.
3. One sentence you wrote: where this still will be used, and confirmation that no third-party likeness is in it.

Do not upload the PNG into this course if it contains a site you cannot show. The card and captions are enough. Keep the images in your Imagine history.

Rubric

• Pass: Prompt Card has job, contents, must-not-appear, likeness call, and stamp. You opened Imagine and either produced two iterations or captured a plan/limit block after a real generate attempt. Likeness call is only “no third-party likeness” or “my own likeness.” The still has a work use, not a vibe. Your sentence names the use.
• Fail: “Make it professional” with no contents. A real coworker’s face, a student’s face, a client, or a celebrity. Sexualized or undressing prompt. Fake logo or credential as the point of the image. You never opened Imagine. No session stamp. A still you made in another tool and attributed to Grok.

Common failure

The common failure is decorating instead of specifying. You ask for “cinematic, hyperreal, golden hour, award-winning.” Imagine gives you a commercial for a company that does not exist. Nothing on the frame can be read from the back of the shop.

The fix is rude and short. Name the objects. Name the labels. Ban the extras. Iterate one defect at a time. If a person appeared and you did not ask for one, say “remove every person” — do not name them, do not “fix her smile.”

What’s next

You have a still that can work. Next lesson: a short video from a still you have the right to use — and the likeness rules that get stricter once the picture moves.

I am in Grok Mastery (Russell Tech), Pathway A, lesson A6 — useful images.

Interview me with exactly five short questions, one at a time:
1) What job will this still do (briefing card, process picture, listing/slide frame, diagram, other)?
2) Who looks at it, and on what (phone, print, projector)?
3) What must be readable in the frame? List the objects.
4) Confirm: no real person's face or body, no photo I do not own, no logo I do not have rights to. If I hesitate, stop and tell me to pick a different still.
5) Aspect ratio and finish (flat graphic, field photo style, blueprint, other).

After I answer, write a Prompt Card with exactly these labeled lines:
- Job:
- Audience and surface:
- Contents:
- Must not appear (always include: no real likeness without consent, no minors, no sexualized content, no fake credentials or logos):
- Imagine prompt (one block I can paste):
- Iteration 2 prompt (change one defect):
- Iteration 3 prompt (change one defect):
- Likeness call: "No third-party likeness" or "My own likeness, my consent" — nothing else is allowed.
- Session stamp: today's date and "This prompt card was written by Grok in this thread."

Do not invent objects I did not name. If I ask for a real coworker, client, student, or public figure, refuse and ask for an invented or faceless figure.

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I generated the still. Defects I saw: [one or two lines].
Rewrite only the final Imagine prompt. Keep the Prompt Card labels. Refresh the session stamp: today's date and "This prompt card was written by Grok in this thread."