Pokémon Go Data Quietly Trained AI for Drone Battlefield Mapping

Millions of Pokémon Go players spent years scanning real-world locations for in-game rewards, unaware their data would later help train artificial intelligence (AI) tied to military drone navigation systems.

Since 2021, the game has encouraged users to capture photos or videos of real-world landmarks through its PokéStop Scan augmented reality (AR) feature.

Those uploads have since grown into roughly 30 billion scans, which were fed into a large database later used by Niantic’s spin-off, Niantic Spatial, to develop a 3D mapping system, according to an investigation by Dutch media outlet Trouw.

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