Niantic is quietly using your Pokémon Go data to train large-scale geospatial AI models

Niantic is making geospatial AI models to help computers navigate real spaces, and it’s using your Pokémon Go data to help

Niantic

Niantic is making geospatial AI models to help computers navigate real spaces, and it’s using your Pokémon Go data to help. Niantic quietly announced its AI plans in a corporate blog post and said its model will help position augmented reality (AR) as “the world’s operating system” (thanks, 404 Media).

“The LGM [Large Geospatial Model] will enable computers not only to perceive and understand physical spaces, but also to interact with them in new ways, forming a critical component of AR glasses and fields beyond, including robotics, content creation and autonomous systems,” Niantic said in the post. “As we move from phones to wearable technology linked to the real world, spatial intelligence will become the world’s future operating system.”

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And to think, it only took data quietly harvested from millions of users – with no apparent or easily accessible disclosure for how Niantic intended to use it – to make such a leap possible.

Niantic said it built its Visual Positioning System on images and videos people send in from around the world, part of a feature where users voluntarily sign up to capture location information and help Niantic develop new augmented reality products. However, Niantic also said it uses precision location information, such as the kind it gathers from Pokemon Go users to create scenarios where players can interact with digital objects in real locations asynchronously. 

A close read of Niantic’s privacy policy shows that users have no options to turn off location data – unsurprising, seeing as Pokemon Go is a location-based game – but also no recourse for determining how Niantic uses that data. Niantic outlines what it shares with outside providers and what personal information it never provides to third-party vendors, but it doesn’t disclose what Niantic does with the data it collects, including location data. 

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The policy also seems to consider location data as separate from Personal Data – information such as a user’s name, birthday, ISP address, and email address – so it’s possible Niantic could bundle location information together without including names and other Persona Data and share with other vendors.

Whatever the case, Niantic says it’s been developing this geospatial model since 2019, though this post seems to be the first time the company was transparent about how it uses location data.