A German photographer has found himself in a legal saga against an artificial intelligence body.
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Robert Kneschke discovered, last February, that a significant portion of his portfolio had ended up in the LAION database used for the training of artificial intelligence.
It was after this discovery that Kneschke decided to write to the organization to ask them to remove his photos from the image bank.
A day later, LAION announces to him that not only does she refuse his request, but claims an amount of $1336 (US$979) from him for an “unjustified” request for recognition of copyright, reports Vice.
At the end of March, Kneschke notably asked the entity to provide information regarding the terms of use of his work, i.e. which works, how long they were used and how they were obtained.
The alleged culprits retorted that there had been no copyright infringement and mentioned that German law states that “it is permitted to make reproductions for research purposes” if the works are “legally accessible and then deleted.
The photographer has also documented all the stages of his misadventure on his Facebook account and his personal blog.
“As announced, we have filed a lawsuit against LAION eV in the district court of Hamburg,” he announced in a publication dated last Thursday.
LAION describes itself as “a free and open network [open-source] large-scale artificial intelligence and a non-profit organization” whose goal is to “make learning models and datasets and associated code available to the general public”.
The organization has a bank of 5.8 billion images.