GoKawiilNiantic pivots from Pokémon Go to building AI 'world models' for robots
Niantic, which sold Pokémon Go last year, is now applying the mapping data it gathered through the game to build 3D 'world models' at its Niantic Spatial division. CTO Brian McClendon says these models reconstruct real-world environments, while Odyssey CEO Oliver Cameron describes world models as systems that predict the next visual state of a scene rather than the next word in a sentence like language models do.