{"id":9719,"date":"2026-06-12T12:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=9719"},"modified":"2026-06-12T12:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:01:11","slug":"pokemon-go-players-unwittingly-contributed-to-tech-with-military-drone-uses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=9719","title":{"rendered":"Pok\u00e9mon Go players unwittingly contributed to tech with military drone uses"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-bottom:1em; color:#666; font-size:0.9em;\">\n<strong><br \/>\n                    Jeremy Hsu<br \/>\n                <\/strong><br \/>\n &bull;<br \/>\nJune 12, 2026\n<\/div>\n<hr\/>\n<p>A decade after the global craze for<em> Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> peaked, an AI company has been using billions of real-world images captured by millions of players to develop navigation technologies for delivery robots and possibly military drones. That represents an intriguing but potentially discomfiting legacy for an augmented reality mobile game that has incentivized gamers to capture short smartphone videos of physical neighborhoods and landmarks.<\/p>\n<p>The AI company, Niantic Spatial, was spun out of <em>Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2019\/02\/niantic-poised-to-settle-pokemon-go-trespassing-complaints\/\">game developer Niantic<\/a> in May 2025, after Niantic separately sold its licensed games such as <em>Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pif.gov.sa\/en\/news-and-insights\/newswire\/2023\/savvy-games-group-completes-acquisition-of-scopely-for-fourty-nine-billion\/#:~:text=PIF-owned%20games,for%20%244.9%20billion.\">Saudi-backed<\/a> video game publisher Scopely. But before that deal, Niantic publicly announced plans to use <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2024\/11\/niantic-uses-pokemon-go-player-data-to-build-ai-navigation-system\/\">scans from millions of <em>Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> players<\/a> along with data captured by users of the company\u2019s Scaniverse app to train and develop a \u201clarge geospatial model\u201d\u2014a 3D model of the physical world trained on the geolocated images provided by app users scanning real-world locations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGround scans were one component to help train Niantic Spatial&#8217;s real-world foundation models \u2014AI systems that learn to recognize and interpret physical spaces,\u201d a Niantic Spatial spokesperson told Ars. \u201cThe models are the product of that training, not a copy of or a means of accessing the underlying scans, which were of public points of interest such as statues and fountains.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2026\/06\/pokemon-go-players-unwittingly-contributed-to-tech-with-military-drone-uses\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2026\/06\/pokemon-go-players-unwittingly-contributed-to-tech-with-military-drone-uses\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top:1.5em;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2026\/06\/pokemon-go-players-unwittingly-contributed-to-tech-with-military-drone-uses\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read the full article &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremy Hsu &bull; June 12, 2026 A decade after the global craze for Pok\u00e9mon Go peaked, an AI company has been using billions of real-world images captured by millions of players to develop navigation technologies for delivery robots and possibly military drones. That represents an intriguing but potentially discomfiting legacy for an augmented reality mobile<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=9719\" class=\"themebutton2\">READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}