Jack Osbourne promises taste, Sharon wants immortality like Elvis – but who decides what the digital Ozzy says? This is what lies behind the Hyperreal project.
The sentence that decides everything comes not in a press release, but in a YouTube live stream. Jack Osbourne counters the criticism of his father Ozzy’s AI avatar with perhaps the most honest formulation this posthumous industry has ever produced: It will be “so tasteful,” he promises, “it’s not gonna be fucking lame.” A man praises taste by swearing. Very Osbourne.
Immortality as a business model
Last week at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, Jack and his mother Sharon announced that Ozzy is returning — not as a hologram gesture, but as an interactive, answering doppelganger built by tech company Hyperreal. The first life-size touchscreen units are scheduled to appear in the US and UK from late summer 2026. Sharon formulated the promise directly: You could ask the digital Ozzy anything, and he would answer in his own voice — and say what Ozzy would have said. The role model she named is treacherous: Elvis died 50 years ago and everyone knows Elvis – that’s exactly what she wants for Ozzy. Immortality as a business model. But it is precisely this promise that raises the fundamental question: How will an AI trained on archive material ever know what Ozzy would have said? She doesn’t know. She appreciates. And now we are closer to an episode of “Black Mirror”.
An approval that no one can attest to
Jack’s strongest argument is also his most untestable. The family discussed the idea with Ozzy before his death and he was up for it. “I know he would be into this.” A consent that is passed on as a memory remains an assertion – the only person who could confirm it will live on the touchscreen in the future.
The ending that shouldn’t be one
The timing is piquant. It’s been less than ten months since Ozzy’s death. On July 5, 2025, he sat on a throne at Back to the Beginning in Birmingham, playing his last concert with Black Sabbath; He died 17 days later. The doctors had warned that the performance could kill him – but he wanted it anyway. It was one of the most epic farewells a musician can have: a sold-out stadium, tens of thousands singing every line, a single man at the center – images last conjured up by Freddie Mercury at Live Aid. Except no one knew about the ending then and this time everyone in the room knew. The real, dying man staged an ending because he wanted one. The digital one promises that there is none: “It will exist digitally as itself as long as we have computers.” Intended as a consolation, it sounds like a threat to calm.
