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Espionage
ChinaPolitics

China warns popular phone games may provide map data to train foreign military AI models

Ministry urges gamers to be wary of app ‘check-in locations’ that seem abnormally clustered around classified or restricted facilities

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China’s state security ministry recently issued a warning about turning citizen-collected data into “key intelligence that threatens national security” from AR games. Photo: AFP
Carol Yangin Beijing
China’s top anti-espionage agency on Monday warned gamers that a company with overseas defence ties may be obtaining geospatial data via an augmented reality game.

The warning quoted media reports about “the militarisation of civilian data” that said billions of environmental scans from a popular mobile phone game were being used to train AI models with potential battlefield applications.

In a social media post, Beijing’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) cited reports that said an AI company linked to a prominent augmented reality (AR) game had harvested user geospatial scans, which could be used to train spatial AI models and potentially be deployed for military purposes by the firm which had partnered with a foreign defence contractor.
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“The report has fuelled global concern over the ‘militarisation of civilian data’ and served as a warning of the growing data security challenges in the digital intelligence era,” the ministry said.

While the ministry did not explicitly name the company, the details match recent controversy surrounding Pokemon Go, the AR mobile hit game developed and published by United States’ firm Niantic in partnership with Japanese firms Nintendo and The Pokemon Company.

The game encouraged players to scan and upload recordings of real-world locations through their devices in exchange for in-game rewards.

Niantic Spatial – a spin-off company from Niantic – owns nearly 30 billion scans from the game and used these data in training a 3D model that allows for very precise navigation when the GPS signal drops, Dutch media outlet Trouw reported this month.

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