A decade after the global craze for Pokémon Go peaked, an AI company has been using billions of real-world images captured by millions of players to develop navigation technologies for delivery robots and possibly military drones. That represents an intriguing but potentially discomfiting legacy for an augmented reality mobile game that has incentivized gamers to capture short smartphone videos of physical neighborhoods and landmarks.
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The AI company, Niantic Spatial, was spun out of Pokémon Go game developer Niantic in May 2025, after Niantic separately sold its licensed games such as Pokémon Go to the Saudi-backed video game publisher Scopely. But before that deal, Niantic publicly announced plans to use scans from millions of Pokémon Go players along with data captured by users of the company’s Scaniverse app to train and develop a “large geospatial model”—a 3D model of the physical world trained on the geolocated images provided by app users scanning real-world locations.
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“The training data came from people who thought they were catching Pikachu, under a license most never read, sold up a chain that ends at a sovereign wealth fund and a defense prime,” wrote Haye Kesteloo, editor in chief and founder of the news website DroneXL. “Consent obtained for a game is not consent for a weapons program, even if the end use turns out to be defensible.”
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A Vantor spokesperson told Ars that the company “is not using any Pokémon Go data, nor do we have access to any information from the Pokémon Go dataset.” Similarly, Niantic Spatial’s spokesperson said that the agreement between the companies does not include direct sharing of game data.
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But some Pokémon Go players, such as De Hingh, will probably be uncomfortable with the idea that their gameplay data helped train Niantic Spatial’s models in the first place—especially when the company’s visual positioning system may be used for military applications. Vantor acknowledged that it is “exploring adapting Niantic Spatial’s ground-based visual positioning system” to work alongside Vantor’s existing “GPS-denied positioning capabilities,” which currently rely on satellite imagery.
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Niantic Spatial told Ars that it has no ongoing access to data from current Pokémon Go players, because the game license has belonged to video game publisher Scopely since May 2025. But players may still want to stay on top of the game’s Terms of Service agreement and privacy policy to understand how their data is currently being used—or may otherwise be used in the future. It’s a lesson that goes well beyond Pokémon Go.
Shoot The People is a documentary capturing photographer and activist Misan Harriman’s journey documenting global protest movements that drive social change. Renowned for his wide-ranging work — including powerful breakthrough images from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and capturing the Palestinian liberation movement on film — Harriman also made history as the first Black man to photograph a British Vogue cover.
The film follows Harriman as he highlights the resilience of grassroots activists fighting for equality, civil rights, and social justice, the film showcases the intersectionality of these movements and their collective power. With historical context, interviews with activists, and explorations of digital activism, the documentary reveals how Harriman's lens brings the world's activism to light, inspiring viewers to recognize their own power in shaping a more just society.