Niantic Spatial, which spun off from the Pokémon Go creator in May 2025, trained a "world model" on 30 billion images that players spent years capturing in cities for in-game bonuses. That AI model is now being used, among other things, for military drones.
Niantic insists the scanning was opt-in and had been mentioned in the privacy policy since 2019.
Why it matters
Millions of players scanned streets, parks, and buildings for in-game rewards — effectively building a planet-scale spatial dataset for free. That this dataset ended up in military applications raises an uncomfortable question: does opt-in consent buried in a terms-of-service document count as meaningful agreement? Nobody expects their 2019 Pokéstop scan to end up in a drone's navigation system.