According to the latest news, it seems that over half a billion Pokémon Go players helped train AI robots with data. In a day and age where people online are super skeptical of data collection and privacy, it turns out that one of the biggest mobile games was doing it for years.
The news comes after a part of the Pokémon Go development team, Niantic, announced that they are partnering up with Coco Robotics. This is a company that is known for making robots that help deliver groceries and other essentials.
But now they will be notoriously famous as the company that is going to use collected data in order to design AI-powered robots. The revelation has started discussion among quite a lot of people, with reactions reaching even outside the Pokémon Go community.
Pokémon Go was transparent about data collection
Niantic’s Pokémon Go was a revolutionary mobile game that took the world for a ride when it launched almost 10 years ago. It was a time when there was no AI on sight, and even though online data collection was an issue, it surely wasn’t as widely discussed as things are right now.
Pokémon Go used augmented reality-based technology with the help of the phone’s navigation and camera to create an experience where people could catch Pokémon in real life. It became a worldwide phenomenon, but has since mellowed down in popularity.
Now, with the help of Niantic’s Visual Positioning System, Coco Robotics will be able to accurately ascertain someone’s location, all thanks to over 500 million people who played Pokémon Go.
However, this is not the first time that the news about Niantic collecting Pokémon Go user data has come up. In 2024, in an official blog post, the company had already revealed that it was going to use the years of collected user data to train some “Large Geospatial Model.”
Social media reaction to being farmed for data collection
Online users are most definitely mixed on reception after learning about this, with most of them pondering over the consequences of spending hours and years helping Niantic collect data. Some of them are jokingly making posts about the due payment for helping train robots.
There is a good deal of users who are understanding of what the data is being used for and were quick to remind everyone that Niantic did not collect the information without consent. The company was thoroughly transparent over such practices for years.
What is important is to understand that Niantic is not going to use the collected Pokémon Go data for any malicious practices, according to an official Niantic source. While that can be completely false, and we may never know.
But it will become a serious problem if this tech appears once again in the future through another source or form, and actually collects data for malicious intentions. Most hope that people will stay cautious and demand transparency.
