There is an optional AI-aided meditation component. Optional for two reasons: the course lecture can decide to have it, or not. If the component is turned on, it will be indicated in the course description, and participants can decide to use it, or not, for a total of one month. It cannot be purchased, it is offered as an optional course aid. At the moment, it cannot be extended beyond one month after the last class. It does not offer additional course material, it is there to aid the meditative experience.
In practical terms: one week after the last synchronous class ran, participants will be able to access a pre-recorded meditation, based on the tradition being explored in the course. If participants decide to write a short summary of their experience after meditating, AI will analyse the short summaries and select, among a set of meditations pre-recorded by the class lecture, another meditation. Each week the meditation will be reselected by AI, based on the participants short feedback. It can give the same, or select another one among the pre-recorded options. This is done using open source AI (meaning: transcripts do not go to train the public AI). For privacy reasons, it stores only what meditations were selected, why, and the satisfaction rate received from the participant, on a scale from 0 to 5. It does not retain any other interactions.
Our preferred approach would be for the AI component to work from the participants device, so no text leaves it at all, if they so desire. However at this stage, it would open too many scenarios (different devices, some people using it, some not, etc.) that we cannot handle right now. At the end of the second month after the class ran, the AI module is no longer available, regardless if it was used or not. It cannot be extended.