Pokémon Go Was Supposed to Bring People Together. Instead, It Trained AI for Military Drones.

Does anybody else remember Pokémon Go? About 10 years ago, the trailblazing augmented reality (AR) app sent millions of people out into their local parks, forests, and shopping malls to try and track down Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and every other Pokémon creature you’d never heard of.

It was actually a really charming moment in tech history. The app got people up and moving, gave friends who hadn’t spoken in years something to do together, and helped local businesses flourish from the extra footfall. But every charming moment seems to come at a price.

According to new revelations, some of the smartphone scans we were all innocently using to track down little cartoon characters have since been used to train the same artificial intelligence (AI) tools that guide military drones and help them find off-the-grid targets. 

As always, there’s a bit more to it than that. This all stems from a partnership between spatial AI firm Niantic Spatial and defense technology company Vantor, and both companies are 100% adamant that the raw scans from your Pokémon Go adventures weren’t just loaded straight into a missile guidance system.

Even so, there’s no doubt that player-contributed data has indirectly supported military technology. And that raises some uncomfortable questions about consent and data privacy that need to be answered sooner rather than later.

From Catching Pokémon to Mapping the Real World

Before we hop right into your data rights, let’s backpedal a little bit for anyone who missed the global phenomenon.

Launched in the summer of 2016, Pokémon Go was an explosive AR app that invited you to scan real-world landmarks as you hunted for cartoon characters. Players were able to snag in-game rewards for submitting short scans of statues, fountains, and other points of interest. Why?

Those scans were used to help AI systems figure out how physical spaces look from different angles. In learning more about those spaces, the software behind it learned how to identify locations and understand each position relative to the rest of the world. This visual-positioning technology was ultimately released by Niantic Spatial, a spinoff from the company that originally owned Pokémon Go, and the military applications were pretty obvious from the get-go.

In December 2025, Niantic announced a new partnership with defense contractor Vantor to develop the system further. As a result of that partnership, army assets like drones don’t have to rely on spotty GPS anymore. They’re now able to utilize a camera view and instantly compare it with a map of the surrounding environment to establish an exact position. That makes it easier for drones or other autonomous weapons to stay on-target.

While none of this involved sharing Pokémon Go scan data, Niantic Spatial has acknowledged that player-submitted scans were one of the components used to train the AI models behind this new defense partnership.

So, does that mean your Pokémon Go scans are now guiding a drone in a war zone? No. But it does serve as an important reminder that your data can be used in all sorts of ways after you tick a couple of boxes.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Consent

At the end of the day, this isn’t about whether any of us knowingly volunteered to get involved in a military campaign by submitting scans on Pokémon Go. The issue is whether people actually understood what their data was being used for.

Niantic has pointed out that the scanning feature of its popular game was totally optional, and everything was covered by its terms of service and privacy policy. So, nobody’s phone was secretly recording everything around them. This was something users agreed to. Then again, it really stretches the concept of “fair use.”

When you submit a scan to earn some mobile reward, you can reasonably expect that scan will be used to improve the game or support new AR features. You might even expect to be involuntarily signed up for three marketing newsletters you don’t care about. But chances are you don’t expect those scans to be used to create technology that defense contractors will eventually go on to weaponize.

There’s a distinction between sharing your raw data and using information to train an AI model, sure. But there’s still an ethical problem here, and Pokémon Go isn't unique in this respect. Your smartphone, maps, and wearables are constantly generating information and submitting it to companies so they can build systems that better understand the physical world.

That’s a sociopolitical can of worms that regulators will need to open soon. In the meantime, as a consumer, you should try to be more deliberate about what your devices share.

If you’ve got a big ethical problem contributing to AI systems like this, check on apps whether optional scanning or location features are enabled. Review app permissions and privacy settings, and make sure you actually read the small print before you start ticking boxes on webforms.

But there's also a simple takeaway here for investors, and that’s the fact that the real value of a technology doesn’t always stem from its users. 

Just look at Niantic. The company’s mapping expertise might have been developed in part through a popular Pokémon game, but that expertise has now proven its worth in robotics and defense. That creates huge commercial opportunities and plenty of room for growth. But market watchers also have to think about how that growth manages partnerships and manages public trust.

There’s nothing to say that playing Pokémon Go five years ago directly contributed to firing a missile at somebody. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that your personal data has a very long shelf life. Seemingly harmless digital activity is being used more and more often to build things that might not be so harmless.

That’s something you should be thinking about the next time you scroll straight to the bottom of some new app’s privacy notice without reading a word.

On the date of publication, Nash Riggins did not directly have a position in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.