140 Million Pokémon Go Players Unwittingly Became Free AI Workers? Niantic Uses Game Data to Train Centimeter-Level Positioning System

140 million Pokémon Go players may not have realized that the 30 billion real-scene photos they took over 10 years have become free data for AI training. These images, with centimeter-level positioning, covering millions of global points, and including dynamic changes across weather and time, were used by game developer Niantic to train its Visual Positioning System (VPS).

VPS can achieve precise positioning in GPS-dead zones like high-rise canyons and underground tunnels, helping Coco Robotics' delivery robots improve efficiency with over 500,000 deliveries completed. What players thought was entertainment was actually a 10-year global crowdsourced mapping project.

Niantic had this model in its strategy from the start. After spinning off from Google, it received huge investments with a peak valuation of $9 billion, and even established Niantic Spatial to focus on spatial AI. Players' data is quietly driving the development of AI navigation and robot technology.