There is always a grain of truth in a proper conspiracy theory. Despite claims dated back to 2016, recently amplified by Belarus's head of ideology, that #Pokemon Go was funded by CIA, #Niantic, the owner of the popular game, used the user-acquired data to train Large Geospatial Model (#LGM).
https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/gotta-catch-em-all-how-pokemon-go-covertly-captured-your-data-for-years-to-train-a-massive-ai-model
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/12/pokemon_go_spying_belarus_claims/
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/11/niantic-uses-pokemon-go-player-data-to-build-ai-navigation-system/
#AI #privacy #conspiracy_theories
Gotta Catch 'Em All: How Pokémon Go covertly captured your data for years to train a massive AI model

Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, has been scraping users’ scans of the world to build a model that will help robots navigate physical space. Some experts are worried about the potential applications.

Live Science
@klokanek I find it most troubling that people don't think this data is being used anyway, since most cell phone providers record your GPS data. Google base is a significant portion of its traffic data on Android devices and I'm sure iOS does the exact same thing. Also, does anyone ever wonder why Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Google drive, and so many others really really want you to automatically upload all your photos? I'm sure it's fine though LOL, capitalism always is right?
@equationeer Yes, exactly. Digital photographs are almost always geotagged. I imagine what a massive #datamining must be run on these #cloud providers. #Apple Memories being just and example:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170302022740/https://medium.com/@iosight/behind-apples-advanced-computer-vision-for-photos-app-41f3f617d31c
Apple’s updated Photos app recognizes thousands of objects, scenes and facial expressions

Apple’s updated Photos app recognizes thousands of objects, scenes and facial expressions. This is not documented anywhere and is subject…

Medium
@klokanek @equationeer simple check of accesibility of some former remote military object has some value, as metadata. If the objects are no longer used, it would be expensive to guard them. So if the object is reachable, it is probably unused and the fog of war is gone.