“We actually talked about it before he passed…so, yeah. I know he would be into this.”
It all started with Tupac, then Michael Jackson, then John Lennon. Now it’s time for Ozzy Osbourne’s digital resurrection. But is it too soon?
During a 30-minute livestream on his YouTube channel, Jack Osborne addressed the ongoing outrage regarding the planned AI resurrection of his father: “It’s gonna be so tasteful what we’re doing. It’s not gonna be fucking lame.”
It hasn’t even been a year since the heavy metal legend’s passing, and fans are very sceptical about the timing of it all, thinking it’s just a tasteless cash grab to build on the mourning of many.
A vast majority are not in favour of this uncalled resurrection, “Jesus Christ, even when dead they’re putting him to work. Depressingly dystopian”, one fan had to say.
Regardless, Jack has pleaded to the fans that this is something Ozzy would have wanted, and that it’s a way for people to honour and interact with one of rock’s biggest icons.
“It’s really complex what we’re doing. This isn’t just like hooking up an image of my dad to ChatGPT. This is some high-level technology that we’re gonna be working with, and it’s gonna feel very real, and it’s kind of wild how it will be utilised.”
At the Licensing Expo trade show in Las Vegas last week, Osborne’s widow and son, Sharon and Jack, announced that they partnered up with Hyperreal and Proto Hologram to re-create the Prince of Darkness as a life-sized, AI-powered digital avatar.
Sharon said that the fans would be able to “ask Ozzy anything, and he will answer you in his own voice…the answers will be what Ozzy would have said”.
AI Ozzy will supposedly be taken on a UK and US summer tour in the form of a life-sized interactive touchscreen that metal fans all around the world can talk to.
To get a taste of what this experience could look like, Proto Hologram and Hyperreal resurrected the late Stan Lee for Los Angeles Comic Con, which was met with the same backlash.
So, who will be the next? Will it be another Beatle, Prince, David Attenborough? Or even Steven A Smith?
