Creative Book Covers Crafted with AI

Eighth-grade students at Punahou School have utilized generative artificial intelligence to create images inspired by literature. This project was designed to help students understand the potential of AI and express their creativity. Faculty member Hugh Mosher introduced this technology in 2024, believing it had matured enough for classroom use.

During the 2024-2025 school year, Mosher assigned a special project requiring students to create book covers using AI. Students chose excerpts from five popular public domain children's books, including 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', 'A Christmas Carol', 'Peter Pan', 'Treasure Island', and 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz', to design their covers.

To complete the project, students accessed Adobe Creative Cloud's suite of graphic design, video editing, and photography software. The Firefly platform generated images, and Photoshop was used to stitch each image pair together on the book's spine. Adobe's AI models are trained only on its image stock and public domain material, allowing Mosher to impart important lessons on the ethical and financial issues of using copyrighted images.

Initially, students pasted their chosen book passage into Firefly's prompt window. If the initial images did not match their vision, students rephrased prompts to focus AI generation on specific scene aspects. This revision process is crucial for students to master.

The artwork generated by Firefly, combined with the students' skills in assembling images, resulted in remarkable outcomes. Mosher highlights how technological advances democratize creativity and make art tools more accessible. This rapidly redefines the future role of artists and illustrators.