alt.hn

3/16/2026 at 1:05:33 PM

'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images

 https://www.popsci.com/technology/pokemon-go-delivery-robots-crowdsourcing/

by wslh

3/16/2026 at 2:58:59 PM

I like Pokemon Go and play almost every day. I did this scan one time and then stopped. The rewards are not worth the hassle. I don't think many players are doing it. It's just very weird to stand somewhere and scan an object.

I also wouldn't say 'unknowingly trained', it's pretty obvious what it does, and I think the game even tells you that they want to understands how the POI looks like in 3D.

by abroszka33

3/16/2026 at 5:24:32 PM

> I don't think many players are doing it.

Do we have to think? Apparently they amassed 30B images. :)

by mikae1

3/16/2026 at 6:28:11 PM

30B images isn't that much in the context of Pokemon Go playerbase of ~50 million (conservative estimate based on users today). That's about 600 images per person, in a game that has been out since 2016... that's pretty low adoption as the previous user said. I don't think the quest has been out since 2016, but considering a large fraction of users are basically daily users, it's still quite a small number of images.

by momoschili

3/16/2026 at 7:23:21 PM

That 30B could just be the useful set after cleanup.

by skeledrew

3/16/2026 at 3:29:01 PM

My son showed me how he does these quests: he points the phone at the floor and just wiggles it back and forth.

by organsnyder

3/16/2026 at 3:36:41 PM

Haha :D Good tip, I will try that too.

by abroszka33

3/16/2026 at 5:18:56 PM

Your son is a bad data point.

by deadbabe

3/16/2026 at 7:36:21 PM

Aww... shucks. I'm such a proud father.

by organsnyder

3/16/2026 at 6:21:17 PM

Bad for some goals, good for others.

by Supermancho

3/16/2026 at 4:08:44 PM

exactly. that is why i doubt they will get actual navigable information out of it.

by FrustratedMonky

3/16/2026 at 5:38:13 PM

To maintain that take, wouldn't you need to offer a plausible way that Niantic managed to train their Visual Positioning System using that data if the data was all bad?

by pohl

3/16/2026 at 7:06:33 PM

I guess we don't know the terms of the deal, as far as how much they paid? So maybe they didn't pay much, so whatever data they could extract was ok for the cost.

The other point from article. I took this as experimental, so maybe we'll find out later that they really couldn't get much usable data.

by FrustratedMonky

3/16/2026 at 6:58:36 PM

I used to just record the ground and even leave out my feet, but apparently they detect and ban people who do this too often now. The data was always going somewhere shady, but after the sale it is even worse so I just stopped completely. At best you get a poffin or rare candy and that absolutely is not worth it.

by Larrikin

3/16/2026 at 4:01:24 PM

Same, I do it once in a great while. Give me a rare candy or rare candy XL per scan and you’ll find me jumping all over the neighborhood!

by ohyoutravel

3/16/2026 at 4:09:06 PM

Niantic are a number of people who are doing this. Its not that clear from the article, but niantic spatial are using the images captured from users to create a 3d model of "THE WORLD" or where people play pokemon go.

They have then fed that data into a more modern version of colmap (https://github.com/colmap/colmap) to create a point cloud. Then the engineering to make sure that point cloud is aligned accurately and automatically.

Once you have that point cloud aligned to the world, all you need is another image with some overlapping feature. Using simple trigonometry you can work out where the camera is from one picture

This is largely trivial to do for a few 100 sqaure meters. the hard part is doing it fast in at the city scale. Extracting a few thousand features from an image and then matching them against >billion other points is hard to do quickly, without some optimisations.

The thing that is not mentioned here is that data freshness is actually more important. Building change (advertising hoardings, paint jobs, logo changes, building remodelled etc) so the data goes stale. Its actually not that expensive anymore to just send your own people to scan areas. (A number of startups pre 2020 did it, mapillary provides a platform for it, although now owned by facebook)

The robots will be feeding that data back in to the map. the special sauce is updating the map without infringing patents, and doing it efficiently.

by KaiserPro

3/16/2026 at 6:22:16 PM

Niantic has been doing this for a long time starting with Ingress. I've maybe done a handful of scans in PoGo but as others have mentioned the rewards were just not worth the trouble. The rewards for doing it in Ingress were much better (at least back in the day).

I'm more split on my feelings towards it these days given our current political/social climate but part of me still thinks the idea of mapping the real world in great detail is a worthy endeavor if it can be done "right". I'd probably be more inclined to support it if they would release the data or make it publicly accessible for others to use but it being tied to the whims of a corporation (even one that's been less shitty than most) makes it hard to get behind.

by rigrassm

3/16/2026 at 7:27:41 PM

> if they would release the data or make it publicly accessible for others

HAH! Deep dreams.

by skeledrew

3/16/2026 at 3:03:12 PM

At what point will we have people transmit their car dash cams along with GPS information in order to generate more data? I’m actually surprised this hasn’t happened yet with self driving car manufacturers needing more and more data

by Aboutplants

3/16/2026 at 3:32:48 PM

https://www.getnexar.com/

Not obvious if they're successfully selling any of their collected data yet, but they must at least have plans to try.

by xnx

3/16/2026 at 3:33:53 PM

Tesla does it and clearly it’s not all that useful in reality.

by dawnerd

3/16/2026 at 4:01:41 PM

Thats because Tesla is useless, not because the data isn't valuable.

Tesla has explicitly ruled out using "HD maps" for autonomous vehicles. This means that all the data they have is going to not building maps, but building scenarios for testing its self driving models.

If you look at Wayve, they are building nerf maps to allow them to create scenarios for edge cases. all of that comes from the gathered data.

If you want to build visual navigation systems, you need lots of fresh data from all over. Seeding it with the data that naintic has is useful, but a lot of that data is out of date so not that useful anymore.

by KaiserPro

3/16/2026 at 3:29:43 PM

This.... absolutely already happens. It's trivial and cheap to purchase the three meter, three second resolution data of millions of vehicles.

by chaps

3/16/2026 at 5:32:39 PM

Mobileye builds their maps like this

by rangestransform

3/16/2026 at 3:15:14 PM

Great question. A "Ring Dashcam" with a mobile connection would win customers based on name recognition alone.

Not a lot of big companies in the dashcam market, there are a lot of alphabet companies and some small players like Vantrue. The only company with broader recognition is Garmin and it feels like a weird side gig for them.

by jerlam

3/16/2026 at 2:52:55 PM

Despite the lack of transparency, is this so bad? Players are being given a game in exchange for collectively building a database.

by LollipopYakuza

3/16/2026 at 2:59:26 PM

It's the lack of transparency that is bad. PokemonGo did not make it clear it was taking (and uploading) pictures.

You could argue that "of course it must be for AR", but that isn't clear at all. The camera shows a live image before I take a photo, and I wouldn't expect a photo to be captured and sent if I didn't press the (virtual) shutter.

There are probably some cheap phones that do precisely that, and I'd be just as annoyed at them and raise the same concerns.

by xnorswap

3/16/2026 at 4:21:29 PM

It isn't recording surreptitiously. The data was collected as part of an optional feature which is a very intentional process where you start a scan and then move around the object being scanned to get data from multiple angles, and then click to upload the data to Niantic. The uploading is called out specifically as a separate step (at least early on it was common for uploads to fail, so it had the option to save the scan to upload later when you had better signal). There is nothing secret about the fact that Niantic is collecting this data.

The lack of transparency is about how Niantic is using the data, selling it to third parties for purposes unrelated to the game. And I agree with the parent that this is a fair trade for a free game, especially since that part is optional, but more transparency would be better.

by pavon

3/16/2026 at 3:35:09 PM

I recall there being a pretty obvious notice when they first ask if you want to participate. Whether people read it is another thing.

by dawnerd

3/16/2026 at 3:58:47 PM

The article doesn’t say when this collection happens but there is some part of the game the involves photographing specific landmarks which does involve pressing a shutter. I’m guessing that’s where this comes from but would be great to hear from a better source.

by smegma2

3/16/2026 at 3:04:49 PM

> crowdsourced data, seemingly collected for one purpose

> Whether players knew it or not, those scans were creating 3D models of the real world

Kind of shitty reporting. Did users know about this data collection or not? Was it not disclosed?

by tantalor

3/16/2026 at 3:12:17 PM

The privacy policy was just a generic corporate "we may collect some information to improve a service" crap.

Technically, lawyers will argue that users had to opportunity to inform themselves.

Practically, nobody knew.

by jeroenhd

3/16/2026 at 3:29:45 PM

The quests themselves are prominently labeled "AR mapping". You don't need to go into the privacy policy to know what they are.

by organsnyder

3/16/2026 at 4:09:00 PM

It is not at all clear that the mapping is for purposes other than the AR features in the game itself though. In fact Niantic advertised the scanning field research as helping them make richer experience at PokeStops (which they did).

Niantic was much more upfront about this with Ingress, so people who know the company's history will likely guess that Pokemon Go is serving the same purpose, but for someone coming into the game without that background, there is nothing in the game itself that indicates that data is being collected for other commercial purpose.

by pavon

3/16/2026 at 5:32:50 PM

And we’re all training ai right now with our comments. Even the bots here.

by poontunia

3/16/2026 at 5:16:34 PM

Not unexpected, but it looks the oldest kid, Ingress, is being ignored again. IIRC, there was some badge you could earn by doing a number of those scans.

Or is Ingress even still around?

by JakeStone

3/16/2026 at 6:09:00 PM

The OG was alive and kicking when I hopped back on a year and a half ago. No where near what it used to have as far as active players go but in my big city area there are still lots of active OGs and new people hopping on.

by rigrassm

3/16/2026 at 5:32:33 PM

They were(are?) the same backend, same world maps, same POIs. Maybe they diversified at some point but at launch the Gyms were 1 to 1 with Ingress portals in my city.

It is interesting that the 'non-gaming' division of the split kept Ingress.

by pchew

3/16/2026 at 6:07:32 PM

Does anyone remember Ingress? I always wondered what it was we were training by playing that game.

by Molitor5901

3/16/2026 at 6:10:37 PM

Considering that Niantic was behind both ingress and pokemon go, the answer is all of this.

by bitxbitxbitcoin

3/16/2026 at 5:58:29 PM

Millions of software devs unknowingly trained LLMs to start replacing their jobs.

PUSH your code to fit to find out more.

by elictronic

3/16/2026 at 3:08:29 PM

Looks like teenagers are going to have fun playing Pokemon Go, and now have faster food deliveries.

It's useful to map the world, this is what Google / Baidu / Yandex Maps are doing too.

by rvnx

3/16/2026 at 3:24:01 PM

It is indeed useful.

The question is how one stands on the monopolistic collection by a commercial entity.

I personally don't mind to share GPS traces and other data with i.e. open streetmap, as I directly benefit from the data as well and it's more or less equal between different entities.

I try not to give too much to Google and similar companies as this increases their competitive advantage, while my benefit is small.

by johannes1234321

3/16/2026 at 6:27:52 PM

Nintendo's brand means nothing.

by gradientsrneat

3/16/2026 at 3:35:53 PM

Big corporations have found the way to make us work for free in their own terms. The balance of power between the working class and capital is totally broken.

And for me it is not just the lack of transparency. It is the power balance. I should not need to work for free, give my data, and god knows what to play a game. I should not be living knowing that I am being exploited at each interaction with software. Transparency is good, but not enough. "Click here to accept" and thousands of lines of legalese do not create a fair society.

by Frieren

3/16/2026 at 4:35:43 PM

You don't need to work and if you do you get rewarded in the game. Money is not the only motivating factor for people. Even something like keeping Google Map up to date can bring value to people from helping others. Helping others is not zero sum. Just because a company benefits from helping others that doesn't mean it's bad.

by charcircuit

3/16/2026 at 4:49:07 PM

It’s the lack of transparency that is the problem. There should be a clear labor exchange disclaimer: “we are asking you to do X minutes of AI training for one unit of in-game reward.” What people take issue with is Tom Sawyer tricking people into whitewashing a fence.

by teeray

3/16/2026 at 5:35:24 PM

You're right in that money is not the only motivator for people. I would also argue that if you told them the _real_ reason, aka your own actual motivation behind the offer, the number of people who would actually be "playing" would be much lower.

I would be motivated to collect free data if it meant I was helping save lives, with that help not being behind a paywall.

I would be motivated to play a free game with ads just for the fun of it.

I would not be motivated to play a free game just for the fun of it if my playing of the game was furthering some faceless corporation's profit motives.

In fact, in that last scenario, I would feel tricked, and it would take a non-trivial amount of money for me to not feel that way.

by mapkkk

3/16/2026 at 6:50:58 PM

Same thing with social media. If they clearly disclosed that the more time they spend glued to their apps the more money the company makes the majority would be turned off.

by tartoran

3/16/2026 at 3:59:16 PM

The americans who believed anti-communist propaganda might have been the dumbest generation in history: they gave up a decent democracy with actual democratic say in how society is run in order to fear the world comfortably from home.

by throwaway27448

3/16/2026 at 4:47:56 PM

You reckon subsequent generations improved? Hint: look around and see what's happening, and how that came about.

by penguin_booze

3/16/2026 at 4:34:10 PM

For Maga, democracy is too socialist.

LOL: Remember when they literally said the Pope wasn't Christian enough.

by FrustratedMonky

3/16/2026 at 5:21:58 PM

Maga, all butt hurt with the slow, creeping realization, that they are the baddies.

Before: "Freeeeeeddommm of Speech".

Now: "News outlets must follow admin talking points or be hung for treason" We'll solve that buy just buying them out.

by FrustratedMonky

3/16/2026 at 3:38:09 PM

> I should not need to work for free, give my data, and god knows what to play a game.

The game is free, with doing so being the price. If you don't like that price, you can always pay $80 for a traditional Pokemon game.

As such, I don't get the handwringing. There is no such thing as a free lunch and never will be.

by gjsman-1000

3/16/2026 at 3:49:12 PM

Is there an $80 Pokémon game where walking outside is a core mechanic and that facilitates interaction with a huge network of users?

by ses1984

3/16/2026 at 6:17:30 PM

A long time ago they had the games that came with a "Pokéwalker", which was a pedometer that acted as a sort of mini-game, but that's the closest they got to a mainstream game where you have to get off the couch. It almost meets your specification (well, did, I'm sure the internet part is offline so you're not connected anymore), but it's obviously not exactly what you meant.

by gs17

3/16/2026 at 3:53:02 PM

Take a walk while you play your switch

by Brainspackle