You were training AI while catching Pokemon
Credibility score: 84/100 — Highly Credible. This video is highly credible with well-supported claims.
BSmeter analyzed "You were training AI while catching Pokemon" and rated it 84/100 for credibility (a BS score of 16/100 — highly credible), on 2026-04-25. Its weakest claim — "Niantic spun off Niantic Spatial after selling Pokémon GO" — scored 45/100 and was flagged as dubious. 20 claims were checked against the video transcript. Scores are produced by BSmeter's AI analysis of the transcript, not independent human verification.
Claims analyzed
Pokémon GO had 500M installs in 60 days, 143M peak users — Solid (80/100)
Those Pokémon GO numbers are spot on — classic hype stats that hold up 📱🔥
Niantic spun off Niantic Spatial after selling Pokémon GO — Dubious (45/100)
Niantic didn't sell Pokémon GO — they still own it. Spin-off maybe real, but this framing is off 🚩
Niantic spun off after selling Pokémon GO, partnered with Coco Robotics using VPS trained on 30B images — Verified (95/100)
Nailed it — Niantic did spin off into Niantic Spatial after the 2025 Pokémon GO sale, Coco partnership announced March 2026, and yes, 30B images power their VPS. Spot on. 📍✅
Pokémon GO players unknowingly built massive visual dataset from phone images while catching Pokémon — Solid (85/100)
True on the data collection via gameplay — players scanned landmarks for PokéStops/gyms, creating 30B+ images. 'Nobody told them' is more vibe than strict fact, but ethics angle is fair. 🎮🕵️
Niantic VPS locates to centimeters using photos of buildings/landmarks, no GPS needed — Verified (95/100)
Dead accurate — VPS 2.0 (April 2026) hits cm-level precision by matching camera feeds to 3D maps from billions of images. Fixes GPS fails in cities. Genius tech. 🗺️🔍
Niantic Spatial CTO quoted saying they know your position to cm accuracy — Verified (95/100)
Direct quote from Brian McClendon checks out perfectly — spot on, and yeah, it is kinda creepy 😬📍
Niantic's AR scan tasks collected 1M scans/week by 2024 for 3D models — OK (70/100)
AR scans are real (players built 3D models for rewards), and scale is huge — but exact '1M/week by 2024' not in public sources. Plausible given 300M total scans. 📈🤔
Niantic sold games division incl. Pokémon GO to Scopely for $3.5B in March 2025 — Solid (85/100)
Sale happened, price exact, games listed correct — closed a bit later in May but core claim nails it 💰✅
Scopely owned by Saudi's Savvy Games Group, so Pokémon GO is Saudi-owned — Verified (92/100)
Ownership chain 100% accurate — PIF via Savvy owns Scopely, now with Pokémon GO 🕌🎮
Niantic spun off spatial AI as Niantic Spatial, owns Pokémon GO training data — Solid (88/100)
Spin-off real, data from 8+ years of gameplay stays with them — players built it unwittingly 🤖🗺️
reCAPTCHA trained Waymo AI with user image labeling — Verified (95/100)
Spot on — reCAPTCHA was straight-up free labor for Waymo's self-driving tech. Wild how we all pitched in unknowingly 😎✅
Niantic got 30B images from 143M Pokémon Go players over 8 years — Solid (85/100)
Nailed the insane scale — 30B images from players is legit Niantic Spatial gold. Numbers track with recent reports 📈✅
AR scan consent hid true AI/robotics data use and Saudi ownership — Solid (80/100)
Harsh but fair — consent was buried in game bait, not upfront about AI/delivery bots or Saudi ties. Precedent-setter 🚩✅
Pokémon Go provides centimeter-accurate, weather-tagged location data — Verified (95/100)
Spot on — Niantic's data is legit centimeter-level precise with all that metadata richness. Players built this goldmine without knowing 🔥📍
Niantic Spatial's large geospatial model predicts location from photos like LLM predicts words — Verified (92/100)
Nailed the analogy — LGM is exactly the 'spatial LLM' Niantic announced. Show a pic, get your spot on Earth. Mind-blowing tech 🗺️🤖
2018 Strava heatmap exposed secret military bases — Verified (100/100)
Classic example — Strava lit up secret bases like Christmas trees. Perfect analogy for fitness data risks 🎯✅
Niantic got 30B images via gamified collection and $3.5B exit — Solid (80/100)
30B images spot-on from player scans — $3.5B sale to Scopely happened March 2025. Sneaky but real strategy. 📱💰
Pokémon Go data: thousands of images per spot from all angles, weather, over 8 years — Solid (85/100)
Thousands per location over 8+ years? Checks out with 30B total images. Way better than Google Maps' boring single shots 🌤️🌧️
Top AI datasets built by unaware people, not data centers — Opinion (50/100)
Bold take but fair — Pokémon players unknowingly fed Niantic's AI beast with real-world scans. Gamification genius or creepy? 🤔
LGM apps: AR glasses, autonomous vehicles, construction, urban planning, surveillance potential — Verified (88/100)
All real apps — from Coco delivery bots to AR overlays and yes, surveillance vibes flagged by PopSci. GPS killer in cities 🚀👀
See the full analysis with sources and timestamps →