From Digital Bravado to authorship: a layered competency model for generative AI in interactive audiovisual production (games/XR)
TL;DR
A four-layer competency model is proposed to help creators and educators use generative tools as collaborators without surrendering voice, intentionality, or care to make Digital Bravado visible and to provide a developmental pathway beyond it.
Abstract
Generative AI is accelerating audiovisual production in games and extended reality (XR), yet it also introduces a distinct socio-technical risk: creators can produce complex, plausible outputs faster than they can meaningfully verify, maintain, or author them. We term this phenomenon Digital Bravado - a misalignment between perceived competence and actual capability that arises when knowledge remains externalized in the model rather than internalized by the creator. While related to automation bias, AI overreliance, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and cognitive offloading, Digital Bravado is domain-specific: it is particularly consequential in interactive audiovisual production, where meaning is enacted through motion, timing, and feedback. Drawing on research-creation methods grounded in the authors' full development and dual-store release of the mobile interactive experience Sleep Train, this Conceptual Analysis proposes a four-layer competency model (AI Literacy → Production Infrastructure Literacy → Engine and Tool Integration Literacy → Critical Literacy) to help creators and educators use generative tools as collaborators without surrendering voice, intentionality, or care. Two practical artifacts, a model overview and a self-assessment rubric, are offered as propositional tools to support curriculum design, reflective practice, and further validation. The framework aims to make Digital Bravado visible and to provide a developmental pathway beyond it.