Pokémon go has been stealing your info!!!
Niantic has announced that it's building a new
"Large Geospatial Model" (LGM) that combines millions of scans taken from the smartphones of players of Pokémon Go and other Niantic products. This Al model could allow computers and robots to understand and interact with the world in new ways, the company said in a blog post spotted by Garbage Day.
The LGM's "spatial intelligence" is built on the neural networks developed as part of Niantic's Visual Positioning System. The blog post explains that "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," and "This data is unique because it is taken from a pedestrian perspective and includes places inaccessible to cars." Niantic Chief Scientist Victor Prisacariu was more explicit in a 2022 Q&A, saying, "Using the data our users upload when playing games like Ingress and Pokémon Go, we built high-fidelity 3D maps of the world, which include both 3D geometry (or the shape of things) and semantic understanding (what stuff in the map is, such as the ground, sky, trees, etc)." As 404 Media points out, nobody who downloaded Pokémon Go in 2016 could have predicted their data would "one day fuel this type of Al product."
In an era where data privacy is paramount, Niantic’s announcement of the Large Geospatial Model (LGM) raises significant questions about user data collection. This model utilizes millions of data scans from Pokémon Go players to create a spatial understanding of the world, which relies heavily on user-generated content. The data used is collected from mobile devices, emerging from a gameplay perspective, enabling a highly detailed mapping environment. Critics argue this could lead to privacy breaches, as user data—once thought to be harmlessly collected for gameplay enhancements—now fuels AI advancements potentially beyond initial player consent. Furthermore, the neural networks behind Niantic's Visual Positioning System (VPS) exemplify how user-generated data evolves into comprehensive 3D maps, indicating a profound change in how personal information is leveraged in technological developments. As players engage with Pokémon Go for entertainment, it is imperative they remain aware of the fine print regarding data usage, especially as gaming technology intertwines more closely with AI and geo-location services. This situation invites scrutiny and discussion surrounding the ethical implications of data collection, pushing players to advocate for transparency and consent in mobile applications.
