> Also, LAION gathered the images via crowdsourcing. I participated.

I don't think the data collection methodology is really relevant. However the dataset was gathered, there are certainly ways to use it that would violate copyright. You couldn't print it in a book for example.

The important question is if training a generative AI on copyrighted data is a violation of copyright. US copyright law doesn't address this because AI didn't exist when it was written. It will be up to the courts to decide how this new application interacts with the law.