https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/11/niantic-uses-pokemon-go-player-data-to-build-ai-navigation-system/

Last week, Niantic announced plans to create an AI model for navigating the physical world using scans collected from players of its mobile games, such as Pokémon Go, and from users of its Scaniverse app, reports 404 Media.

All AI models require training data. So far, companies have collected data from websites, YouTube videos, books, audio sources, and more, but this is perhaps the first we've heard of AI training data collected through a mobile gaming app.

"Over the past five years, Niantic has focused on building our Visual Positioning System (VPS), which uses a single image from a phone to determine its position and orientation using a 3D map built from people scanning interesting locations in our games and Scaniverse," Niantic wrote in a company blog post.

The company calls its creation a "large geospatial model" (LGM), drawing parallels to large language models (LLMs) like the kind that power ChatGPT. Whereas language models process text, Niantic's model will process physical spaces using geolocated images collected through its apps.

The scale of Niantic's data collection reveals the company's sizable presence in the AR space. The model draws from over 10 million scanned locations worldwide, with users capturing roughly 1 million new scans weekly through Pokémon Go and Scaniverse. These scans come from a pedestrian perspective, capturing areas inaccessible to cars and street-view cameras.

First-person scans

The company reports it has trained more than 50 million neural networks, each representing a specific location or viewing angle. These networks compress thousands of mapping images into digital representations of physical spaces. Together, they contain over 150 trillion parameters—adjustable values that help the networks recognize and understand locations. Multiple networks can contribute to mapping a single location, and Niantic plans to combine its knowledge into one comprehensive model that can understand any location, even from unfamiliar angles.

"Imagine yourself standing behind a church," Niantic wrote in its blog post. "The closest local model has seen only the front entrance of that church, and thus, it will not be able to tell you where you are. But on a global scale, we have seen thousands of churches captured by local models worldwide. No church is the same, but many share common characteristics. An LGM accesses that distributed knowledge."

The technology builds on Niantic's existing Lightship Visual Positioning System, which lets players place virtual items in real-world locations with centimeter-level precision. A recent Pokémon Go feature called Pokémon Playgrounds demonstrates this capability, allowing users to leave Pokémon at specific spots for others to find.

Niantic suggests the technology could support augmented reality products, robotics, and autonomous systems, with additional applications in spatial planning, logistics, and remote collaboration.

Did Niantic's millions of players have any idea their scans would be fed into an AI system? Judging from this Reddit thread reacting to the 404 Media article, it seems that many are not surprised. "Definitely wasn't unwittingly," wrote one Redditor. "Most of us knew their business model didn't revolve around supporting the actual players."

No doubt the process was covered by Pokémon Go's data collection terms of service, but the larger reaction to this news will likely be a developing story.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3329203&forum_id=2#48367991)