A little while ago I was watching a fun little movie called Yesterday which came out in 2019. The premise is simple: the protagonist, who is an aspiring singer-songwriter, finds himself in a world where The Beatles never existed. So he decides to recreate and publish their songs as his own to gain fame and fortune. An amusing plot which got me to wonder whether or not I would plagiarize someone’s work if found in a similar predicament.
After all, it’s an interesting conundrum to ponder, especially as AI tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, Sora, and Suno have caused a lot of discussion in the fields that they are affecting. Writers, artists, musicians, editors, audio engineers, composers, lyricists, and many other creative jobs feel threatened due to the speed that these AI tools can produce competing facsimiles. One of the discussions around these tools is that they are, somehow, plagiarizing the work of artists in order to create seemingly original content (more specifically artwork).
Though that is a discussion for another time.
Of course, if you found yourself in a world in which there never existed your favorite artist, writer, composer, etc. I doubt you could even get an AI to recreate their work. Nevermind trying to recreate certain types of work yourself.
Like in Yesterday, music is probably one of the more easier things to recreate if you remember the lyrics and the music. With certain caveats such as you needing to have some experience as a musician to create a perfect copy of the original. Even so, it would be hard for someone to plagiarize unless they could remember everything. One of the running gags in Yesterday was the main character trying to remember the words to Eleanor Rigby.
Another example would be if Star Wars or the Harry Potter series never existed and you were the only one to remember them. Sure, you could plagiarize the ideas, story, characters, and plot. But not perfectly in any way. You could remember the major plots, but probably forget many of the minute details that helped make these IPs so popular and successful.
Like many anime where the protagonists find themselves in a completely different world, they miss their favorite foods, songs, stories, etc. In one particular anime, The Eminence in Shadow, the main character repeats things to his minions about his time on earth and many of them attempt to recreate the things he recounts. One of them creates chocolate, another one the department store concept, a different character becomes an author but takes the stories and turns them into smut novels, and yet another becomes a musician and performs piano pieces that she heard the main character play such as Moonlight Sonata.
It’s pretty funny to watch as the series unfolds.
But, if I were in a situation where I found myself in a new world or timeline, I would definitely be tempted to try and recreate my favorite things. Why not? The original creators don’t exist and the things they created were great and something I would want to experience over and over again. At the very least, I would definitely make sure that chocolate is invented if it didn’t exist.
Even then, there would be so many things that I would never be able to plagiarize or have a professional in that field recreate. Which is sad to think about. All of my favorite operas, books, orchestral music, movies, artwork, etc that I would be unable to experience ever again because I wouldn’t have the skills or ability to copy them.
Of course, it is also about the money and not just the experience. I’d be lying if I said otherwise, and so would anyone else who would plagiarize under those circumstances. Thankfully, that is not something which will happen to me.
But what about you? Would you try and plagiarize your favorite things if one day they were winked out of existence? What would be the first thing you try to copy?
Author’s Note:
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