Niantic Spatial has refuted claims that Pokemon GO data was used for the purpose of training military drones for the defense company Vantor, following a report from the outlet Trouw. In-game scanning was previously a feature in Pokemon GO that encouraged players to record videos around geographic locations marked as PokeStops. The feature is at the heart of reports about how the developers have used data collected from players.
A fan favorite Pokemon GO event returns in the month of June, and fans are already excited to see it brought back by the game's developers.
Niantic Spatial addressed its partnership with Vantor in a discussion with IGN. The company explicitly says that "sharing this data is not part of the agreement," meaning scans from users have not been exchanged. While ground scans from users of games like Ingress and Pokemon GO were used to train Niantic Spatial's own models, none of that data has been provided to Vantor. PokeStop scanning was added to Pokemon GO several years ago, but was removed from the game following Niantic's acquisition by Scopely. Niantic Spatial was not part of that acquisition, and exists separately.
