[HN Gopher] 'Pokemon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery ro...
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'Pokemon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B
images
Author : wslh
Score : 164 points
Date : 2026-03-16 13:05 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.popsci.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.popsci.com)
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Stalking as a service - upload a photo of your target and get
| back gps coordinates, coming soon!
| LollipopYakuza wrote:
| Despite the lack of transparency, is this so bad? Players are
| being given a game in exchange for collectively building a
| database.
| xnorswap wrote:
| 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.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I recall there being a pretty obvious notice when they first
| ask if you want to participate. Whether people read it is
| another thing.
| pavon wrote:
| 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.
| rasz wrote:
| Database that will one day be used to program cruise missile.
| abroszka33 wrote:
| 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.
| organsnyder wrote:
| My son showed me how he does these quests: he points the phone
| at the floor and just wiggles it back and forth.
| abroszka33 wrote:
| Haha :D Good tip, I will try that too.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| exactly. that is why i doubt they will get actual navigable
| information out of it.
| pohl wrote:
| 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?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| 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.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Your son is a bad data point.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Bad for some goals, good for others.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Aww... shucks. I'm such a proud father.
| snapetom wrote:
| My friend did this. He always took pictures of his feet. He
| was banned from submitting scans and Wayfarer for a few
| years. He just got access back.
|
| We joke that maybe PoGo didn't get any benefit from his data,
| but _someone_ did.
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| 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!
| mikae1 wrote:
| _> I don 't think many players are doing it._
|
| Do we have to _think_? Apparently they amassed 30B images. :)
| momoschili wrote:
| 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.
| skeledrew wrote:
| That 30B could just be the useful set after cleanup.
| Larrikin wrote:
| 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.
| snapetom wrote:
| I'd imagine it's not just the research quests, but it's
| submissions for new stops, too.
| tantalor wrote:
| > The massive crowdsourcing effort could use real-world to help
| robots deliver pizza.
|
| Huh? Does popsci not have copy editors?
| Aboutplants wrote:
| 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
| jerlam wrote:
| 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.
| chaps wrote:
| This.... absolutely already happens. It's trivial and cheap to
| purchase the three meter, three second resolution data of
| millions of vehicles.
| xnx wrote:
| 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.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Tesla does it and clearly it's not all that useful in reality.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| 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.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Mobileye builds their maps like this
| tantalor wrote:
| > 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?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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.
| organsnyder wrote:
| The quests themselves are prominently labeled "AR mapping".
| You don't need to go into the privacy policy to know what
| they are.
| pavon wrote:
| 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.
| tantalor wrote:
| Right, but it sounds like the data collection itself was
| pretty well communicated. So nobody should be surprised
| it gets used for some other (legal) purpose than was
| originally intended.
| nijave wrote:
| Yes. You had to enable AR scans, follow the prompts that tried
| to ensure they were quality (although lots of people just
| scanned the ground), then click a big green upload button. When
| completed, you were compensated with in-game items.
|
| I think it was quite obvious they were harvesting data although
| lesser technical players maybe weren't.
|
| What's less obvious is the fact they record all your location
| data for who-knows-what purposes.
| rvnx wrote:
| 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.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| 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.
| serf wrote:
| wasnt this sort of obvious to anyone familiar with Niantic?
| DANmode wrote:
| "What's Niantic?"
|
| _looks back down at phone_
| Aurornis wrote:
| My friend plays Pokemon Go for hours every day while walking his
| dog. I asked him about this and now we're both confused. The in
| game scanning is only for major landmarks in the game. Even in
| his dense city these landmarks are few and far between. The world
| model would only have sparse information in the area immediately
| surrounding these landmarks.
|
| I don't know if there's much substance to the delivery robot
| story. This could be a journalist trying to make the story
| relatable.
| tim333 wrote:
| I was thinking the 'scan a pokestop' data would be very patchy
| but I guess they also have images from people catching pokemon
| in AR mode?
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I'm not positive this was a secret (See: Reddit post about it
| from 2018):
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/8i7byi/pokemo...
| Frieren wrote:
| 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.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > 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.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Is there an $80 Pokemon game where walking outside is a core
| mechanic and that facilitates interaction with a huge network
| of users?
| Brainspackle wrote:
| Take a walk while you play your switch
| collingreen wrote:
| "We've got pokemon go at home!"
| gs17 wrote:
| A long time ago they had the games that came with a
| "Pokewalker", 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.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| 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.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| For Maga, democracy is too socialist.
|
| LOL: Remember when they literally said the Pope wasn't
| Christian enough.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| 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.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| You reckon subsequent generations improved? Hint: look around
| and see what's happening, and how that came about.
| charcircuit wrote:
| 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.
| teeray wrote:
| 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.
| mapkkk wrote:
| 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.
| tartoran wrote:
| 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.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I don't think this is the worst thing trained.
|
| Niantic builds massive geospatial models that can localize and
| reconstruct views: https://www.nianticspatial.com/
|
| Extremely detailed mappings of CONUS with spatial intelligence
| already built around it, and we let the company get sold to Saudi
| government last year.
| Brosper wrote:
| I think that only the author of this post didn't know that.
| Everybody know that Niantic is a big data company.
| ragebol wrote:
| Everyone _in a very specific bubble_
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| Even without looking it up to know for sure it was pretty
| obvious and could be inferred by anyone playing the game.
| Especially the scanning, which was painfully obvious to be a
| data collection method.
| tim333 wrote:
| I didn't know, although I play Pokemon Go and the Wikipedia
| page for them doesn't say big data although it mentions
| "...been developing for years: the Niantic Real World
| Platform." as mentioned in the article although it sounds a bit
| of a work in progress. They make a lot of money as a games
| company.
| atemerev wrote:
| Pizza delivery robot, or a live grenade delivery robot, depending
| on the country and the dataset buyer.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Those pokestop scans are trash. I can't believe they will get
| enough detailed information out of them to allow navigation by
| robots.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| 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.
| 5- wrote:
| see this 2007 talk:
| https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_how_photosyn...
|
| i remember this being available in google maps in 2008 or so.
| fun technology!
| vel0city wrote:
| I remember playing with Photosynth on my Windows Phone. Good
| times.
| sublinear wrote:
| I don't think anyone actually cares about this in principle. This
| is more of a product and marketing problem than a legal or moral
| one.
|
| What people dislike is noticing the strings attached so
| distastefully. I can't think of any fads or pastimes where there
| aren't any, but the benefits of the activity offered should
| outweigh the cost.
|
| In that sense, Pokemon Go was a bad deal. I still don't get what
| was ever in it for the player.
| JakeStone wrote:
| 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?
| pchew wrote:
| 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.
| rigrassm wrote:
| 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.
| poontunia wrote:
| And we're all training ai right now with our comments. Even the
| bots here.
| elictronic wrote:
| Millions of software devs unknowingly trained LLMs to start
| replacing their jobs.
|
| PUSH your code to fit to find out more.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Does anyone remember Ingress? I always wondered what it was we
| were training by playing that game.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Considering that Niantic was behind both ingress and pokemon
| go, the answer is all of this.
| rigrassm wrote:
| 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.
| skeledrew wrote:
| > if they would release the data or make it publicly accessible
| for others
|
| HAH! Deep dreams.
| rigrassm wrote:
| > HAH! Deep dreams.
|
| More of an inner reflection on what it would take for me to
| get behind it hence the last part of that statement lol.
|
| >> 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
|
| I wish I could elevate that scenario to the level of a dream
| lol
| overfeed wrote:
| > I'd probably be more inclined to support it if they would
| release the data or make it publicly accessible for others to
| use
|
| Open Street Maps does exactly this, and could do with more
| volunteers and/or donations.
| rigrassm wrote:
| > Open Street Maps does exactly this, and could do with more
| volunteers and/or donations.
|
| I've used osm in the past but haven't heard of them
| supporting AR style mapping submissions of points of
| interest, do you have any links to resources on that?
| gradientsrneat wrote:
| Nintendo's brand means nothing.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| Pretty sure you take a video when you're doing this task so the
| images are extra extracted from the video?
| RobRivera wrote:
| Lmao - well done Niantic
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(page generated 2026-03-16 23:01 UTC)