The CRAFT Framework for Creatives in Action

In my last article, I outlined the CRAFT Framework for Creatives. You can review that article to get an overview. In this article I will show how, through the CRAFT Framework, you can get your very own apprentice or intern. The CRAFT Framework works as guardrails to keep you and your apprentice working toward your vision, not its. Without guardrails and supervision, your intern can run amok or give you bad advice. This protects you, your work, your business, and your customers, while keeping your creative voice delightfully intact and giving you more time to do what you want to do – create.

Framework Overview

Below is a quick recap of the framework and intent for each of the points:

C – Consent and Credit: Ensures all inputs respect rights and ownership, and openly acknowledge both human and AI contributions

R – Responsibility and Review: Maintain human oversight by carefully reviewing, validating and documenting all AI-assisted work.

A – Authenticity and Artistic Intent: Preserve your unique creative voice or vision while using AI only as a tool to explore possibilities, not replace expression and perform necessary, tedious but ancillary work.

F – Fair Use and Fiduciary Care: Protect privacy, honor copyright boundaries, and use secure, compliant AI platforms to safeguard data.

T – Transparency & Traceability: Disclose AI involvement appropriately and keep clear records to demonstrate how AI supported the creative process.

C – Consent and Credit

Ensures all inputs respect rights and ownership, and openly acknowledge both human and AI contributions

• DON’T Prompt:

  • “Write in the style of [living author].”

  • “Write a [type of content] and make it sound exactly like [Famous Writer]’s latest [published work].

Even more generally, to avoid temptation, don’t prompt:

• Write [type of content], where content is a type of publishable content such as a short story, article, chapter, novel, etc. Often, when collaborating with your AI apprentice, and it gives you outlines or ideas for you to work with it will ask something like:

  
  

“Would you like me to write [type of content] for you?”

JUST DON’T DO IT.

This was what I was warning you about during the introduction. It is suggesting a bad idea. Sometimes, apprentices do that.

DO Prompt:

• “Suggest an outline for [idea with details].”

• “I have an idea for a book. What if [idea].

This is a good prompt for speculative history, future-oriented fiction.

These prompts help overcome the blank page syndrome. It gives you something to work with. Once you have a response and it raises questions, continue to interact with your AI apprentice to further develop your idea.

CREDIT human collaborators; disclose AI-assisted methods.

Example Credit Line: “Concept and story by Mark Delaplane; AI-assisted outline ideation by Copilot Chat M365; Final edit by Mark Delaplane.

Sticking with these guidelines avoids creating works that could be perceived as derived from another’s distinctive artistic expression.

R – Responsibility and Review

• Keep a human editorial pass for every AI-assisted output; fact-check, bias-check and continuity check every AI-assisted response.

• Maintain a log for major AI contributions:

This isn’t part of the creative work, but it is necessary. This is necessary to protect your originality claims. The information you will want to capture:

Identity: Your name/role; collaborators; project title.

AI specifics: Tool/model/vendor, version/build, parameters, guardrails used.

Prompts: Key prompts (full text or sanitized summaries), iterations.

Outputs: What was kept/changed/discarded; your edits; rewrite decisions.

Rights: Licensing details for third-party assets; usage terms.

Disclosures: Where/what you disclosed (public vs. private).

This is the example for this article

Identity: The CRAFT Framework In Action Article for the Quest Inspired Art Technical Article Blog. Author: Mark Delaplane; No human collaborators.

AI Specifics: Microsoft Copilot M365. Web grounding enabled and specific business documents uploaded in the prompt interface (AI Usage Framework for Creatives Article).

Prompts:

The attached document is the second in the series about using AI with creative work. It presents the C.R.A.F.T. Framework for Creatives. I would like you to outline the next article, The C.R.A.F.T. Framework in Action. I would like the tone of the article to be whimsical, like article attached. I would also like to have examples for the following items:- Do not prompt models to imitate authors' or writers' styles.- Credit human collaborators, and when applicable, disclose AI-assisted methods.- Respect licensing, and usage rights- Maintain a log for major AI contributions for transparency and learning.- Use AI to explore techniques, structures, and alternatives, not to replace the voice.- Understand and respect fair use boundaries; avoid creating a derived work based on existing copyright work.- Provide context-appropriate disclosures...- Keep metadata or private notes on AI involvement...- Be ready to articulate how AI helped and what you did as the artist or writer. Also include a discussion about derivative infringement, and more details about maintaining a log, why and how to use enterprise-compliant platforms, disclosure statements and keeping metadata and private notes on AI involvement for audits, contests, or other public inquiries. Remember, this is to help you focus on your creative work and protect you, your work, your business and customers

PRO TIP: As you can see from the prompt, a well-crafted prompt is necessary to the results you are looking for.

Outputs:

• What was kept:

• The outline bullets, for the most part were kept.

• Specific Dos and Don’ts where they were simple one-line statements

• What was discarded:

  • The entire section on principles.

  • Example prompts

  • Tone notes

  • Opening narrative

  • Explanatory text for each heading

  • Reasoning bullet points

• What was changed:

• Details for each outline point

• Disclosures:

The article was made public. There was not personal information used in the article.

• Risks & Checks:

  • An internet search was conducted to validate that there was no similar framework where this article could be construed as derived work.

PRO TIP:   The use of an enterprise class chatbot platform will likely keep a history of your prompt. When you are ready to finalize your writing and want to keep the prompt, copy it to another repository. Most enterprise chatbot platforms will only retain the prompt history for a limited time.

Outputs:

What was kept:

• The outline bullets, for the most part were kept.

• Specific Dos and Don’ts where they were simple one-line statements

What was discarded:

• The entire section on principles.

• Example prompts

• Tone notes

• Opening narrative

• Explanatory text for each heading

• Reasoning bullet points

What was changed:

• Details for each outline point

Disclosures:

• The article was made public. There was not personal information used in the article.

Risks & Checks:

• An internet search was conducted to validate that there was no similar framework where this article could be construed as derived work.

PRO TIP:   The use of an enterprise class chatbot platform will likely keep a history of your prompt. When you are ready to finalize your writing and want to keep the prompt, copy it to another repository. Most enterprise chatbot platforms will only retain the prompt history for a limited time.

A – Authenticity and Artistic Intent

This is what the work is all about. You are the writer or artist. If you stick to the framework. Your voice will shine through. When you complete your log entry, if you find that you are keeping more than you are discarding or changing, that should be a flag that you might be leaning too heavily on the chatbot.

Another technique is to keep the output from your chatbot in a separate document from the prompt output. Use the prompt output as a guide. While writing this article, I used Copilot M365 to create an outline. I then used the outline to guide my writing in a separate document.

Use your chatbot to brainstorm and generate ideas. Example prompt:

• What if…

• “Generate five alternative ideas for a story with [original plot idea]”

Always rewrite outputs in your own voice and style.

F – Fair Use and Fiduciary Care

This is an extension of the Consent and Credit section. In that section I warn not to prompt a chatbot to write in the style of a living author or make it sound like another published work.  To extend this idea.

DON’T: 

• Use part or all of another published work as an input prompt.

• Use recognizable characters, song lyrics, distinctive settings or imagery traceable to copyrighted work. Do your research.

DO: Use an enterprise-class chatbot platform. Using an enterprise-class chatbot platform does several things for your:

• It has an option to keep your work private.

• It provides enterprise level security.

• It offers clear commercial use policies. Many non-enterprise class platforms restrict commercial use of the product.

T – Transparency and Traceability          

When you are finally ready to put your work out into the wild, it will be important to let your customers know, in general terms, where and how use used AI. Use disclosure statement. If post your work on your own website, you will want a page that discusses how you use AI. You will also want a disclosure statement short for pieces of work. If you are writing long-form work, you will want to be ready to explain how and to what extent you used AI. Your logs will help you with the explanation. In some cases, such as writing contents, the use of AI is simply not allowed. In cases like that, no output from your chatbot should be included in the final piece. It can certainly be used for brainstorming, research, outlining and other parts of the work process but not in the actual submission piece. Always remember to fact and bias check the results.

The disclosure statement at the end of this article is a good example of disclosure.

With the framework laid out to help with the creative process,

I hope this series of articles will be helpful in making you feel more confident in using AI as part of your creative work process, helping you with the tedious work that can be a distraction from the creative process.

DISCLOSURE: This work was created by the author. Generative AI was used for outlining exploration, research and line-edit suggestions; all final prose and creative decisions are human-authored. The concept for the C.R.A.F.T. Framework for Creatives was collaboratively developed through a brainstorming session with Microsoft Copilot M365, a Microsoft enterprise-class chatbot grounded in ChatGPT 4.2.  Article image generated with Copilot M365.