Pokémon Go players unwittingly contributed to tech with military drone uses

That allowed Niantic Spatial to develop its own visual positioning system—a type of technology that can provide a device’s position and orientation by comparing visual data from cameras with reference data from detailed 3D maps of environments. Such a system can be especially helpful indoors, in city environments where GPS and other global navigation satellite systems’ signals are unreliable, or in regions where there is active GPS jamming. MIT Technology Review highlighted Niantic Spatial’s technology in March 2026, when the company announced a new partnership with Coco Robotics. The robotics company aimed to use Niantic Spatial’s AI model and visual positioning system to help its fleet of four-wheeled delivery robots navigate city streets. But in December 2025, Niantic Spatial had also announced a deal with the spatial intelligence company Vantor to develop a positioning system that could help both flying drones and ground vehicles navigate GPS-denied environments. Vantor, formerly known as the space and satellite company Maxar Intelligence, has multiple US government contracts with the National Geospace-Intelligence Agency, various branches of the US military, and the Department of Homeland Security. Visual positioning systems are not necessarily fraught with ethical problems, even in a military scenario. For example, the Ukrainian military has been deploying battlefield robots and drones with their own visual positioning systems to survive the prevalence of GPS jamming in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. “If the Ukrainians can win the just war against aggressor Russia with this, it is a good development,” Van den Hoven told Trouw. But the Dutch newspaper also interviewed Floris De Hingh, a longtime Pokémon Go player who expressed concern about his gameplay data supporting US military systems. De Hingh specifically described himself as “strongly opposed to the war Trump is currently waging against Iran.” “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.” 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. 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. 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.