Yes, in a way, but what do we mean by “better”?

In The Unseen Hand: The Influence of Visual and AI Literacy on AI Text-to-Image Generation, and its partner article Algorithmic Creativity, we studied a question on everybody’s mind at the moment:

If an “AI” can create content, such as images, from a typed prompt, do design skills still matter? Or do technical skills matter even more?

In collaboration with Mood Visuals, we asked students from a technical university and a design school to fulfill a brief of creating a “brutalist medieval castle.” We then tracked the prompts that students were using, and the experts from Mood Visuals rated the images on both aesthetic quality and on how well they fulfilled the brief.

As you can see in the paper, we had some hypotheses, but the main takeaways were the following:

1. The student groups created images that were rated as having equal visual appeal. Having visual skills (“visual literacy”) did not improve the aesthetic quality of the images.
2. But: Students with visual skills (“visual literacy”) were much better at fulfilling the task.
3. Visual design students also used a larger vocabulary, including more adjectives, and tried more varied prompts.

From this small study on the use of AI to generate concept art, we can see the outline of what AI image generation does (at least for the moment):
AI image generation has the democratizing effect of allowing everyone to create visually appealing images, but creating something that fulfills a task or is appropriate for a given situation continues to require expertise. 

Alessandro Canossa, Lisa Toender, Lucas Fellner, Jesper Juul, Willem Maden, and Jichen Zhu. 2025. “The Unseen Hand: The Influence of Visual and AI Literacy on AI Text-to-Image Generation.” IASDR Conference Series. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/iasdr/iasdr2025/fullpapers/337.
https://jesperjuul.net/text/unseenhand/

Thanks especially to my co-organizer Alessandro Canossa, keynote speakers Valentina Nisi, Miguel Sicart, and Tim Garbos, program chairs Max Birk and Anastasia Salter, and to all helpful colleagues and volunteers at the academy. Thank you!

https://fdg2026.org

See you in August!

Read more and register here: https://fdg2026.org

Thanks to everybody who made it happen.

Visual Game & Media Design is a cross-disciplinary program open to all creative BA students.

Read more about the program here: https://royaldanishacademy.com/en/programme/visual-game-and-media-design

From the press:

A deep dive into the reflective modes of playfulness in video games.

Slowness and reflectiveness have always been part of the video game medium, though they have been used very differently throughout its history. In Zen and Slow Games, Víctor Navarro-Remesal challenges the dominant discourse of action and quick reflexes in video games to offer an analysis of reflectiveness as a style in games, tracing its evolution from its origins to the present time. Two labels are of particular importance: the Zen modes (and later, Zen games) of the 2000s, especially during the Casual Revolution, and the slow games or slow gaming movement, which started in the 2010s and is ongoing today. The term “reflective games” is offered as an umbrella to bring together these and other labels to raise awareness and discussion of slow gaming.

Praise:

This book brilliantly explores reflective games, a style that resists capitalism’s rush by creating spaces of peace, presence, and self-discovery. It weaves form, meaning, and everyday tactics into an inspiring vision of play.
Susana Tosca, author of Sameness and Repetition in Contemporary Media Culture and Understanding Videogames

A carefully crafted, profound critique of meditation and slowness in digital games, Zen and Slow Games takes us on a journey to the boundaries of the medium, detaching playfulness from the pressures of winning and performing otherwise dominant in games and contemporary societies.
Martin Roth, author of Unboxing Japanese Videogames and Thought-Provoking Play

In this age of neoliberal life coaching, time management, and endless self-optimization, many of us yearn for slower, more mindful lives. How these aspirations reflect in what and how we play is the focal theme of this timely, accessible, and nimble new book.
Stefano Gualeni, author of Fictional Games and Il Videogioco del Mondo

And the call for papers is out now: https://fdg2026.org/call-for-papers/

Hope to see you (and your paper) at FDG’26.

Important Dates

All deadlines are at 11:59pm (23:59) Anywhere on Earth (AoE).
Note that due to proximity to the holidays, there will be no extensions!

• Workshop, Competition, and Panel Proposal Submissions: 21 November 2025

• Abstract Deadline (for Regular Papers): 5 December 2025

• Regular Paper Submission Deadline: 15 December 2025

• Regular Paper Notifications: 1 February 2026

• Late-Breaking Short Papers & Games/Demos Deadline: 30 March 2026

• Doctoral Consortium Deadline: 30 March 2026

AI Rule no. 1: Cynical writers use AI.

Will AI destroy consulting firms? I enjoy this story where Deloitte have admitted that their report on “Targeted Compliance Framework Assurance Review” for the Australian government was written partly by AI.

Long consulting reports are likely the most cynical and vacuous writing there is, so of course AI will be used.

But I sincerely wonder what this will do to consulting? Will it mean that CEOs will just use AIs for their reporting? Why would anyone pay millions for work/AI slop?

Or is it, just as likely, that consulting firms will charge even higher fees for their special human touch (still written by AI)?

My father died this summer. He lived a long life, leaving four children and five grandchildren whom he loved dearly. He was active to the very end, updating his epidemiology textbook this spring.

My father caught a long period of history, born a month after the beginning of World War II in Denmark, seeing the German troops leave when he was five, studying medicine, becoming the first employee at the new institute of Social Medicine at the University of Aarhus in 1970, and being part of the development of the field of public health, and indeed of the Danish health care system. His most popular book is the introduction to epidemiology, now in its fourth edition.

I once asked my father why he had chosen the field of medicine? “To save the people.” He became a researcher, with a skill in study setups and statistical analysis, at first programmed on punch cards and mainframes, but always interested in how to solve problems, gather data, and gain new knowledge.

I think I picked up two main things from him. First, that changing the world, such as by saving and helping people become healthier, requires genuine humility and curiosity: Even if you have a strong idea of how the world works – a hypothesis – you must set up a test that can prove you wrong, and you must accept the results. Though I work in a different and less immediately important field, I think about how to genuinely ask questions and how to truly take in what the world is telling me in return.

Second, my father was funny, allergic to pompousness and sensitive to the ironies of life, openly annoyed by bad manuals, and he would sometimes write the new improved manual himself. I learned that it is OK to be serious and lighthearted at the same time, and that you can use your annoyance to make things better.

He was also a modest man who would contribute his statistical expertise to the work of others and worry less about citations and web presence. I have set up a page with his publications at jesperjuul.net/svendjuul

It is disorienting not being able to call my father, not being able to discuss a recent event, not being able to run a back-of-the-envelope calculation of energy efficiency,  planning, or especially health by him. Part of me can simulate some of what he would say, but it really is not the same.

At the end, my father suffered from an interminable list of ailments, but he was proud when doctors confessed to having read his epidemiology textbook in class, and proud that he had taught doctors and nurses, gathered and analyzed the data, and helped build the Danish public health system that was now treating him.

Thank you

https://jesperjuul.net/text/gameplay_es/