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

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...