Niantic's 30 Billion Pokémon GO Scans Reportedly Trained US Military Drones
Updated
Updated · Nintendo Wire · Jun 11
Niantic's 30 Billion Pokémon GO Scans Reportedly Trained US Military Drones
3 articles · Updated · Nintendo Wire · Jun 11
Summary
30 billion player-made environmental scans from Pokémon GO were reportedly turned into training data for U.S. military drones and robots via Niantic’s Visual Positioning System.
Niantic began pushing the scan feature in 2021, rewarding users with in-game items; players who opted in reportedly accepted a separate EULA allowing the company to sell that data to third parties.
Brian McClendon, Niantic Spatial’s CTO, said the system helps robots navigate where GPS fails or is jammed, including dense cities and war zones.
Vantor, Niantic Spatial’s defense partner since 2025, denied it would use Pokémon GO data directly but would not say whether its defense model was trained on the same dataset.
The report has intensified scrutiny of how consumer game data can be repurposed for military AI without players realizing their scans could end up in warfare systems.