The Hamburg Regional Court (LG Hamburg) recently dismissed a lawsuit brought by a photographer who sued non-profit AI company LAION for using his photos to train its AI image generators.

We asked Toby Bond, AI, IP and Data expert at Bird & Bird, and 20Minds author, to share his views on the implications of this decision:

"The Regional Court in Hamburg's decision is one small step towards shaping the rules for accessing online context for AI training. The court dismissed the claim because LAION was entitled to use the text and data mining exception for scientific research. However, future cases involving commercial AI training may not be able to rely on this exception."

... and there is an important link to the EU AI Act.

"The court considered whether a generic statement in website terms and conditions can reserve rights in a machine-readable format in a way which disapplies the EU's commercial text and data mining exception. While it did not reach a final decision, this is a key issue for AI development in the EU, especially as the EU AI Act's Article 53(1)(c) requires providers of general-purpose AI models to have a policy to comply with reservation of rights."