Niantic, developer of Pokémon GOworks on building and training an AI or artificial intelligence that is capable of automatically completing real-world locations, with only a limited amount of information. To achieve this, the company uses data collected by players of Pokémon GO. Niantic revealed that it is building a ‘Big Geospatial Model’. Basically like ChatGPT, an AI that is trained with huge amounts of existing text, so that it can then produce text on its own that sounds normal and similar to what a user might want.
A ‘Big Geospatial Model’ is essentially the same idea, but applied to the physical world. It trains on what real-world places look like (a church, a park, a house, etc.) and can then use that data to produce information about what real places it hasn’t seen yet might look like. Niantic claimed that this will be useful for technologies like augmented reality glasses, robotics, content creation, and other things.
The “dynamaxized” contribution of Pokémon
For this to work, Niantic needs a lot of data to train that AI. So Google has been collecting location data for years through Google Maps and the cars it uses to get Street View information, but that’s not enough in this case. Cars can only travel on roads and Niantic needs pedestrian information in places cars can’t go. Luckily, Niantic has thousands of people around the world pointing their phones at things and sending that information across their various projects and apps, including Pokémon GO.
Specifically, Niantic says it has been developing something called Visual Positioning System (VPS), a technology that uses an image from a phone to determine the position and orientation of a location on a 3D map. The technology is supposed to allow users to position themselves in the world with centimeter-level precision, allowing them to view digital content overlaid on the physical world accurately and realistically.
Recently an experimental function began to be implemented in Pokémon GOcalled Pokémon Playgrounds, where the user can position Pokémon in a specific location and they will remain there for others to see and interact with. Niantic said it currently has 10 million scanned locations worldwide, one million usable with its VPS service, and receives one million new scans each week containing hundreds of discrete images. That’s a lot of data power in Niantic’s hands.
Fuente: Niantic
