Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones (dronexl.co) AI

The article says Niantic Spatial used large-scale, player-contributed “Pokémon Go” real-world scans—via a 3D visual positioning approach—to train navigation models that a U.S. defense contractor, Vantor, is pairing with its aerial navigation software for GPS-denied military drones. It describes the Niantic-to-defense pipeline and raises ethical concerns about consent and whether the model was trained on Pokémon Go imagery, noting Vantor says it would not use the game’s data but declined to rule out prior training.