Pokémon Go has been quietly harvesting participant information to coach AI

Key Takeaways

Niantic is creating a “Giant Geospatial Mannequin” (LGM) from information collected by gamers in its video games like Pokémon Go.
The mannequin learns from scans utilizing a Visible Place System (VPS), which might use a single picture to find out its place on a 3D map.
It is unclear how lengthy Niantic has been gathering this location information for.

Do you bear in mind taking part in Pokémon Go again within the day and all the encompassing hype? All of the enjoyable adventures of catching Pokémon round your neighborhood with family and friends? Niantic actually does.

Niantic is the developer behind Pokémon Go, and it has recently announced that it is constructing a brand new “Giant Geospatial Mannequin” (LGM) utilizing hundreds of thousands of scans taken by Pokémon Go gamers on their smartphones (by way of IGN). How does the LGM study from these scans? Properly, that is because of Niantic’s new Visible Positioning System (VPS).

“Over the previous 5 years, Niantic has centered on constructing our Visible Positioning System (VPS), which makes use of a single picture from a telephone to find out its place and orientation utilizing a 3D map constructed from folks scanning fascinating places in our video games and Scaniverse,” Niantic stated in a press release.

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How does Niantic’s LMG work precisely?

Plenty of information and many coaching

You’ve got doubtless heard of a big language mannequin (LLM) mannequin earlier than, like ChatGPT for instance. Its AI mannequin is educated on huge quantities of current textual content so it could produce fairly regular sounding and coherent textual content when the consumer prompts it to. An LGM operates equally. It is educated on what actual world locations appear like, similar to a church or park, and might use that information to supply data on locations it hasn’t seen but. Niantic says the LGM will assist computer systems understand and work together with bodily areas in new methods, and can be utilized in AR glasses, robotics, content material creation, and autonomous methods.

So how does Niantic get all this location information? Properly, its video games, in fact. Pokémon Go continues to be a preferred cellular sport, and it has customers touring and pointing their telephone at locations making an attempt to catch Pokémon. These location scans get despatched again to Niantic, although its unclear how lengthy it has been gathering them for. The benefit of Niantic’s Pokémon Go is that it will get location information different companies like Google Maps cannot.

To map out and create areas with AI, you want extra than simply the angle of a automobile on the street. You want the angle of a pedestrian at road stage taking a look at locations and seeing various things, and that is precisely what Pokémon Go gamers unwittingly ship. I have never performed Pokémon Go in years, nevertheless it’s wild to suppose I could have contributed my very own information to creating an AI product like this. I assume the phrases of service I did not learn had rather a lot in it.