The Starry Night without Van Gogh

Protecting Creativity in the Age of AI

By Isabella Cortés, 2025 Governor's STEM Scholar The Starry Night without Van Gogh is hard to imagine. The masterpiece didn’t just come from talent. It came from Van Gogh’s experiences, emotions, and the way he saw the world. Without him, it would just be a night sky, missing the meaning behind every brushstroke.

As an artist, that reminds me of how much my perspective matters. The choices I make, from the colors I use, the way I shape a line, the things I focus on, all come from who I am. That’s what gives art its power. Reducing The Starry Night to just “a city at night” misses everything that makes it special. And that’s exactly the risk we’re facing if artificial intelligence takes over creative spaces that have always been driven by people.

Recently, Coca-Cola released a holiday ad made entirely with AI. It showed a train moving through a snowy city—no animators, no artists, just a computer generating images. A company like Coca-Cola choosing AI over human creators sends a message to the rest of the industry: creativity can be automated.

Generative AI, the kind of AI that makes images, videos, and even writing, has developed quickly. These tools learn by analyzing massive amounts of data, most of it taken from the internet. That includes artwork, music, and writing, often without permission from its creators. For artists who share their work online, it feels like a trap: either post your art and risk it being used to train AI, or don’t share it and miss out on jobs or exposure.

The issue doesn’t just affect visual artists. Writers like George R. R. Martin and John Grisham are part of a lawsuit against OpenAI for using their books without consent. Musicians like Billie Eilish and J Balvin have spoken out. Actors even went on strike over how their voices and likenesses could be copied. All kinds of creators are worried about being replaced by the very technology trained on their work.

Some artists are pushing back. Concept artist Karla Ortiz is part of a lawsuit aimed at stopping companies from using AI to replace human creators. Tools like Glaze, which hides information from AI models, are helping online artists to protect their work.

Lawmakers are taking this issue seriously too. In Congress, there’s a bill called the NO FAKES Act that would make it illegal to use someone’s face or voice in an AI-generated video or audio without their permission. Another bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act of 2024, would require companies to publicly share what copyrighted materials they used to train their AI systems. This would help artists, writers, and musicians know when their work is being used, instead of keeping it hidden.

Here in New Jersey, Congressman Tom Kean, Jr. introduced the AI Labeling Act of 2023, which would make companies clearly label content that’s made using AI. That way, people know what’s real and what’s not. And our state is also looking at a law that would make it a crime to create or share deepface videos or images of someone without their approval—especially if it’s meant to embarrass or harm them.

If we use AI to support rather than replace human creativity, great things can happen. The movie Into the Spider-Verse was praised for its groundbreaking animation. What many people don’t know is that it used early AI technology not to replace artists, but to support them. The AI helped with repetitive tasks, like drawing the same lines across many frames. It didn’t take over the creative process, It helped make it smoother.

Here in New Jersey — especially during STEM Month — we have a chance to lead with both creativity and responsibility. It’s important that we support laws like the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act and the AI Labeling Act that help protect artists and make sure AI is used in fair and transparent ways. Schools, lawmakers, and tech companies should work together to set clear rules about how AI can be used. Teachers can help start conversations where STEM and the arts work together instead of competing. As a student who cares about both, I think it’s up to people like me—future artists, engineers, and creators—to speak up and make sure AI helps creativity grow, not replace it.

Isabella Cortés is a junior at Union County Magnet High School and a 2025 Governor’s STEM Scholar with a passion for both art and engineering. As someone who hopes to study industrial engineering, she believes technology should support creativity, not replace it.