Listen to this article
Estimated 4 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Jack Osbourne says the AI avatar of his father, Ozzy, is “not gonna be f–king lame.”
That’s the British media personality’s response to backlash from fans after his family announced last week his famous father’s likeness is being recreated as a life-sized AI avatar.
“It’s gonna be so tasteful,” he said in a YouTube Q&A last week, two days after the plan was announced. “It’s really complex what we’re doing. This isn’t just like hooking up an image of my dad to ChatGPT.”
After the announcement, some fans took to social media to express their discomfort with the new tech venture.
“I have a feeling an AI hologram would have been one of the things Ozzy screamed about not doing under any circumstances, but Sharon would make it happen anyway,” one user wrote on X. Another called it “so disturbing.”
The Black Sabbath frontman’s family shared the news at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, during a chat about the future of Ozzy’s brand.
They said they’ve partnered with two tech companies, Hyperreal and Proto Hologram, to “create the digital DNA of Ozzy Osbourne, voice, image [and] movement,” according to a recap from License Global, the event’s organizer.
‘Kind of scary … really very accurate’
The so-called Prince of Darkness died at 76 in July of last year. He died of a heart attack and suffered from coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s, according to a death certificate obtained by The New York Times.
Referring to the AI avatar, Jack Osbourne told the audience in Vegas that “it’s kind of scary how it’s really very accurate.”
“He will exist digitally as himself for as long as we have computers. Technology has come such a long way to where it’s almost drag and drop.”
And by drag and drop, he says, you could shoot a commercial, prompt what you want the avatar to do and literally drop it in. “It’s that simple now,” Osbourne said.
Ozzy will answer ‘in his own voice’
And that’s not all, according to Sharon Osbourne.
“You can ask Ozzy anything, and he will answer you in his own voice – and the answers will be what Ozzy would have said,” the late rocker’s wife said.
“We’re going to take it all around the world.”
She likened her hopes for the future of his brand to Elvis, an icon fans continue to remember. “I just want that for Ozzy,” she said.
Speaking to the BBC, she described the early tests for the avatar.
“You can see every pore on his face … his beard is coming through, it’s that detailed.”
Hollywood holographic history
This isn’t the first time a dead icon has been given the hologram treatment.
Proto Hologram and Hyperreal are the same companies behind the holographic recreation of Stan Lee, which debuted at L.A. Comic Con in 2025. Hyperreal Digital was also behind the de-aged Paul McCartney in the music video for Find My Way with Beck.
A holographic Michael Jackson made its debut at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014, and holograms of Abba have been performing for years in London.
And in 2019, a holographic Amy Winehouse tour was scheduled to run, eight years after her death.
The plan was met with backlash, too.
Fans on social media called it creepy, disrespectful to her legacy, and argued the star should be left to rest. The tour was eventually scrapped over “challenges and sensitivities.”
A holographic Whitney Houston residency in Vegas in 2021 was called disrespectful by fans but went ahead as planned.
Hyperreal told Billboard the Ozzy avatar will begin appearing in life-sized, interactive touchscreens, called Proto Luma units, in the U.S. and U.K. beginning later this summer.
