Image-builder and ansible incompatibility

Trying to run the image-builder utility to create the ubuntu OVA.

I have installed ansible using

python3 -m pip install --user ansible

which defaults to ansible version 9.5.1 and ansible-core-2.16.6

Upon running the image-builder utility, it errors out saying

The version of ansible-core (ansible [core 2.16.6]) does not match the version (2.15.9) which has been tested by the EKS-A team. (Recommened) Remove this version and rerun your image build and the correct version of ansible-core will be installed.

So I uninstalled ansible-core using pip uninstall ansible-core and re-ran the image-builder utility

Now ansible errors out stating ansible version 9.5.1 requires ansible-core-2.16.6 and ansible-core-2.15.9 is incompatible.

Can you please ensure a clarity of the exact version of ansible to be installed such that it satisfies the EKS-A validated procedure for latest version Image-builder

Start by reproducing the image-builder utility failure with ansible 9.5.1 and ansible-core 2.16.6, then compare it with the validated ansible-core 2.15.9 requirement. Update the image-builder installation guidance to state the compatible Ansible version and verify that the documented procedure completes without the version mismatch.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.