Niantic Partners with Vantor on Drone Navigation AI but Does Not Share Pokémon Go Scans

Niantic confirmed a partnership with Vantor after reporting by DroneXL this week. The agreement aims to help drones navigate and coordinate in areas where GPS is unavailable. Historical scans collected from Pokémon Go were used to train Niantic’s AI models to recognise and interpret physical spaces.

The 2016 augmented reality game allowed players to find and catch Pokémon using mobile phone cameras and reached more than 800 million downloads worldwide by 2018. A 2021 update introduced PokéStops that rewarded players for scanning real locations. Players had to opt in and upload recordings to contribute the scans.

“The partnership addresses a critical vulnerability in modern operations: GPS unavailability, spoofing, interference, and jamming,” the December announcement stated. ” Both companies stated that ground scans from Pokémon Go were not provided to Vantor as part of the partnership.

Niantic said the scans were submitted voluntarily by players who opted in and were subject to the applicable Terms of Service and Privacy Policy at the time.

The partnership remains in its early stages, according to both companies. Vantor announced in February a deal with the US Army of up to US$217 million for training software. 5 billion in 2025.

Tom Sulston, head of policy for tech policy think tank Digital Rights Watch, said the use of civilian data for military ends was troubling. “While they may have disclaimers in their Ts&Cs, we know that most people don’t read vast legal documents when they want to play a video game,” he said.

Dr Rob Nicholls, senior researcher associated at the University of Sydney’s centre for AI, trust and governance, said the case was likely the tip of the iceberg regarding data collected from apps being used for other purposes.