ABSTRACT
In this study, we examine how multimedia design engineering students perceive and manage the ethical risks, professional threats, and authorship questions raised by Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Using a quantitative, descriptive-correlational, cross-sectional design, we surveyed 76 students at a public university in Campeche, Mexico. We found that most students already use GenAI in their workflow, particularly for prototyping and ideation, yet over half reported anxiety about professional displacement. When we compared students by academic level, freshmen were more inclined to attribute creativity to AI, while students nearing graduation tended to treat it as a tool. On data sovereignty, financial incentives shifted the position of undecided students, but those who had refused to share their work for AI training on principle did not change their stance. Most participants could not explain how these models work. In the discussion, we interpret these results in relation to current debates on AI literacy and argue that design programs should update their curricula to go beyond software training and address authorship, critical thinking, GenAI model bias, and data governance.
KEY WORDS
AI Ethics. AI Literacy. Data Sovereignty. Generative AI. Higher Education. Multimedia Design. Professional Anxiety.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.34135/mlar-26-01-02
AI Literacy and Multimedia Design: Student Perceptions on Generative AI, Authorship, and Professional Anxiety © 2026
by César Guerra, Benjamín Tass, Gustavo Verduzco, José Cocón, UCM Trnava is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.