Recommendations of the Editorial team
Jack Osbourne has publicly thrown his support behind Ozzy Osbourne’s AI avatar, which was announced last week. The Osbournes have teamed up with Hyperreal and Proto Hologram to create an AI-powered Prince of Darkness – this should be able to talk to fans and will be available in Proto-Luma units in the UK and US later this summer.
Jack and his mother Sharon Osbourne presented the project at the Licensing Expo 2026 in Las Vegas. Jack said it was “kind of scary how damn accurate it all is.” Despite the family’s enthusiasm, there is headwind – both from the public and from Osbourne’s fans. Jack responded to the criticism during a livestream Q&A on Saturday.
“Here’s the thing: What we do is going to be totally tasteful. It’s not going to be fucking lame,” Jack said. “What we’re doing is highly complex. This isn’t just a picture of my father that you plug into ChatGPT. This is technology at the highest level that we’re going to be working with – and it’s going to feel very real. It’s a little crazy how it’s going to be used.”
Ozzy would have been there
He explained that he had discussed similar ideas with him before his father’s death last year. “It’s really cool and I think my dad would have really enjoyed it,” Jack said. “We actually talked about doing something like that before he died… I know he would have been for it.”
Making the announcement, Sharon said: “You can ask the digital Ozzy anything and he will answer you in his own voice – and the answers will be what Ozzy would have said. We’re going to take this around the world. People can talk to him and he’ll talk back.”
“It’s kind of scary how damn precise that is,” Jack said. “He will exist digitally as himself as long as there are computers. Technology has advanced so much that it’s almost drag-and-drop. You could take a template for a commercial…literally type in what you want Digital Ozzy to do in that commercial and just paste it in. It’s that easy now.”
Patented technology in real time
Hyperreal CEO Remington Scott told Rolling Stone that the company created the Ozzy avatar using patented technology that allows the avatar to act in real time. The company relies on the patented “Digital DNA” process to obtain the necessary data to create the avatars.
“He can perform live, respond to audiences and exist in interactive environments,” Scott said. “This is not pre-rendered content played on a loop. This is a living performance, built entirely from authenticated source material: curated, approved and controlled by the people closest to Ozzy.”
