Pokémon Go data was used to help train AI systems being developed for military drones
Remember Pokémon Go, the game that had millions of people running all over the world to find and capture Pokémon on their mobile devices? It was big—so big that Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group bought the game division of developer Niantic for $3.5 billion in 2025—and even though it’s not at the forefront of the public consciousness the way it used to be, it’s apparently still very popular. And also, well, it’s being used to train war machines.
In 2020, Niantic announced new “AR Mapping tasks” for Pokémon Go, and then in 2021 it rolled out Powered-Up PokeStops, which enabled players to team up “to complete AR Mapping tasks and create exciting new AR experiences for Trainers worldwide, simply by using your smart device to scan real-world PokéStop locations.”
Fun and games, right? Except as reported by DroneXL, Niantic Spatial, which was formed when Savvy (through its Scopely division) purchased Niantic’s gaming business, launched a partnership with a company called Vantor in December 2025 “to deliver a comprehensive air-to-ground positioning solution that will enable air and ground platforms to navigate and coordinate precisely in GPS-denied environments.” As is the way these days, that system will be dependent upon AI—which is trained, in part, by Pokémon Go data.
Conventional GPS systems rely on satellites, and virtually all modern military navigation and targeting technology rely on GPS to function. A quick way to disrupt enemy operations, therefore, is to deny access to GPS functionality. That’s where Visual Positioning Systems—VPS—come into play: Simply put, they enable GPS-comparable navigation capabilities when GPS signals fail. That could be handy for anyone, but make no mistake: Vantor’s software is used in military drones, and that’s clearly the company’s priority.
The system being pursued by the Niantic Spatia/Vantor partnership is basically a two-parter: Niantic Spatial enables ground-based users to find their way around accurately even without access to GPS, while Vantor does essentially the same for airborne platforms.
“By combining Niantic Spatial’s expertise in ground-based localization with Vantor’s proven aerial systems and global 3D foundation, we’re building an integrated positioning network that operates anywhere,” Niantic Spatial chief technology officer Brian McClendon said when the deal was announced. “Our Large Geospatial Model gives these systems the ability to perceive, align, and operate in a shared frame of reference—even when traditional GPS is unavailable.”
Pokémon Go data isn’t being used for direct mapping in this system: In a statement to PC Gamer, Niantic Spatial said “ground scans” collected by Pokémon Go are just one part of the inputs used to train its AI models. It also clarified that it doesn’t have access to any ground scan data collected since the acquisition of the Niantic gaming business because that information belongs to Scopely, and that sharing the data it acquired prior to that is not part of its deal with Vantor.
In its own statement, Vantor said it is “exploring adapting Niantic Spatial’s ground-based Visual Positioning System” to operate with its own systems, but added that it does not have access to the actual Pokémon Go data. “Vantor’s GPS-denied positioning capabilities are underpinned by our own 3D data that we produce from our satellite imagery,” a Vantor representative said.
Jeroen van den Hoven, a professor of ethics and technology at Delft University of Technology, told Dutch news site Trouw that it would be very difficult to say exactly how the Pokémon Go data—nearly 30 billion scans, according to the Trouw report —was used in the training of Niantic Spatial’s AI systems. But he believes it would have been impactful.
“Without the large amount of scans from all those gamers, the development of this system would never have progressed so quickly,” van den Hoven told the site. “The players have indirectly, in a perhaps minimal but still effective way, contributed to military applications.”
The data collection in question is covered by Pokémon Go’s TOS. The sections governing both User Content and AR Content state that users “grant to Niantic a nonexclusive, transferable, sublicenseable (through multiple tiers), worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual license” to basically do whatever the hell they want with your scans and data.
Even if the practical impact of this kind of data collection is minimal, as is apparently the case here, it’s a moral and ethical minefield. “The people who thought they were playing a game have clearly been fooled,” van den Hoven said. “It is gradually starting to sink in that companies are not necessarily using our data to truly advance our lives by, for example, improving education. It is about making money. If they can sell a dataset or AI model for a good price, they will do so.”
