Niantic Spatial, an AI company spun out of Pokémon Go developer Niantic in May 2025, used billions of images captured by Pokémon Go players and users of the Scaniverse app to train a large geospatial model. The technology is designed to power navigation for delivery robots and potentially military drones.
Niantic sold its licensed games, including Pokémon Go, to the Saudi-backed publisher Scopely before the spinout. A Niantic Spatial spokesperson said the ground scans were of public points of interest and that the AI models do not provide access to the original images.
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