What exactly is in the course?
The object here is specific. HBS Foundry is an eight-week online programme priced at 699 dollars: live instructors run the weekly sessions, while AI avatars of Harvard Business School faculty give feedback during practice pitches and mock board meetings. The startup HeyGen built the avatars.[1]
The course did not begin in that shape. Programme director Katharina Rings first designed the AI part as a chatbot and changed direction when trial students asked for more structured guidance. Jeff Bussgang, the Flybridge Capital cofounder whose likeness became one of the instructors, called the digital version somewhat creepy and said his students love it. Two things are settled by that: a named person's likeness sits inside the product, and the demand for guidance shaped what the product became.[1]
Where does the footage go?
An avatar of a named instructor implies a capture session and a licence: someone filmed Bussgang's face and voice, and someone agreed what the footage may be used for. The HBS Foundry reporting establishes that the likeness was used with the instructor taking part; it stops short of giving the licence, its term, or whether the capture can be withdrawn. The plainest explanation is that a standard vendor agreement covers all of it and simply was not the subject of the article.[1]
The document that would close the gap is narrow and nameable: a licence summary showing the instructor as the grantor, stating the term, and saying whether the captured likeness may be reused outside HBS Foundry. Until such a text is published, the student holds marketing information about the product and no document that shows the chain of permission.[1]
The student's pitch is filmed too
The flow runs both ways. A student pitching to an avatar also produces a filmed performance, and feedback of the kind described requires the system to process it. What is published says the avatars give feedback during practice pitches and mock board meetings; it does not say whether the pitch footage is stored, for how long it is kept, or whether it can be used to improve the product. Missing information stays missing information, and no allegation follows from it.[1]
There is a testable version of this. If HBS Foundry publishes a course-level notice covering the instructor licence and how student pitch footage is handled, both open questions close without anyone having to infer them; while no such notice appears, the answer stays inside the vendor contract, beyond the reach of the student who paid 699 dollars. The signal to watch will be the notice itself.[1]