Laion rejects deletion request and demands money

The Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network (Laion), which maintains a dataset of 5.8 billion images for AI training, has rejected a photographer’s deletion request. He was also charged a processing fee of around 900 euros.

Photographer demands deletion of his images

In February of the current year, photographer Robert Kneschke had discovered via the website haveibeentrained.com that several of his images had been used for AI training and were in Laion’s database. He subsequently approached Laion with a request to delete his photos from the database, referring in this context to his copyright in the works. The case thus bears a close relationship to the fundamental issues currently being discussed around AI, which have led many experts to call for a halt to AI development in order to be able to clarify open political, legal and ethical questions. Recently, an administrative proceeding was initiated in Germany regarding ChatGPT to resolve outstanding privacy issues. However, the focus of all these efforts is not on the potential rights of the creators of the AI training material at issue in this case.

Laion rejects request and demands processing fee

Shortly thereafter, Kneschke received a letter from a law firm representing Laion. In the letter, the law firm announced that Laion would not delete the images because copyright law was being observed. The primary argument was that Laion had not stored any of its photos directly. In the database, whose contents are used for the AI training, there are only links to the externally stored images. In addition, the law firm charged him €886 for processing an unjustified claim.

Kneschke has announced that he will take legal action against Laion. His case could thus become a precedent for similar copyright issues, at least in the field of AI training.