As I understand it current EU law (both the AI team and the photographer are in Germany so this seems relevant) explicitly allows data mining (for example to train AI) if that data is available online and no machine-readable reservation of rights has been made, but please correct me if I am incorrect in my believe. The German law Podcast "Rechtsbelehrung" also has an Episode [2] on copyright law and AI that touches on this topic and might be interesting for any German planning on using AI.

> ...In the case of content that has been made publicly available online, it should only be considered appropriate to reserve those rights by the use of machine-readable means, including metadata and terms and conditions of a website or a service... [1]

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A... [2] https://rechtsbelehrung.com/113-ki/ or on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sHjcmwqL1hUETKwINtHKu?si=7...