JACK OSBOURNE on OZZY OSBOURNE A.I. Avatar: “for me it's about making sure he's never forgotten”
08-06-2026
On the latest episode of The Osbournes podcast, Sharon and Jack Osbourne addressed the controversy surrounding the recently announced Ozzy Osbourne A.I. avatar, which is coming to life through a partnership between the Osbourne family, Hyperreal, the digital human technology company behind the patented Digital DNA process, and Proto Hologram. Together they will enable the avatar to have conversations with fans and move, speak and respond as Ozzy would.
Addressing some of the negative feedback the Osbourne family has received for pursuing the Ozzy A.I. avatar, Jack said: “What we’re doing — this isn’t, and I’ve said it, this isn’t ChatGPT with dad’s face on it. It’s a closed A.I., so it’s not connected to the Internet. We build a database, and I cannot emphasize enough is that this is only information that either my dad said or was accurate, or was written accurately about him.”
Added Sharon: “Why go on a jet when there’s a propeller? What are you doing? Well, you know what? Technology moves on, and I’m sorry for those people. I’m not asking you to come. I don’t want your fucking money. I don’t need your fucking money. I’m doing very well, actually, and I always have my entire life… And the thing is, for somebody to turn around to me and say I’m doing a cash grab — no, you don’t know my husband, okay? I know my husband, and my husband would say to me over and over, ‘After I go, how long do you think I’ll be remembered? How long do you think?’ And I’d go, ‘I just don’t know, ’cause I’ll be probably going with you, so don’t ask me.’ But the thing was, for 10 years we have been exploring it. And the thing is I don’t have to justify why we do to any fucker. I don’t have to justify. What do they think we’re gonna do? I’m gonna hock my husband around selling Weed Killer on an ad or selling cigarettes or beer? Do you think I’m gonna do that? … And we’re moving with the times… It’s like saying, Why do you need a CD when you have a vinyl record?’ You move with the times. And this is great technology, and I’m not gonna let anyone bastardize my husband.”
Continued Jack: “The most important thing for me is that when we create this digital imprint of Dad, we create it, we own it, we control it. And it’s something that…” “…we’ll pass on through our family,” Sharon chimed in. “And it’s for our grandkids. And that’s it, and I don’t have to justify anything to any fucker out there.”
Jack added: “And at the end of the day, if keeping Dad alive and accessible to a fan is cash grab, then fucking guilty as charged because at the end of the day, entertainment and the industry that we’re in, none of this is for fucking charity… But the technology that we are utilizing, it is not Claude or ChatGPT that you can ask it any question about anything. It’s a closed A.I. module that is not connected to the Internet.”
“Someone said, ‘Oh, it’s dangerous. You can’t control it,'” Jack continued. “And I was, like, ‘What the fuck do you think this is, Terminator? It’s gonna go sentient and next thing you know Ozzy‘s gonna launch the nukes? But I think, for me, it’s not about pretending he’s still alive. For me it’s about making sure he’s never forgotten.”
Sharon added: “And why should he be? You can go and buy books that were written 200 years ago, and they are still… Today’s youth is reading books from two, three hundred years ago. Is that a crime? Should we still keep printing them, guys? Should we maybe do a paperback? You can get it online. Oh, shock, golly, that’s terrible.”
Jack said: “Or you can get an audiobook. I can buy an audiobook with a famous person reading Shakespeare. ‘Oh, how dare you exploit Shakespeare‘s work by having an audiobook?’ Like, ‘That’s not how it was meant to be written.'”
Sharon went on to say: “Listen, it’s redundant. It’s redundant because whatever you do, Jack, there is always 50% that are with you and 50% that aren’t. Nobody in the world everybody goes, ‘Yeah.’ There’s always somebody with that little soapbox.”
After Jack noted that “everyone seems to be yeah about the Michael Jackson movie that’s made nearly a billion dollars,” Sharon concurred. “And good for his family,” she said. “Good for his family. Really. And there’s two generations that missed out on him, and all those little kids are now dancing to ‘Thriller’ and ‘Billie Jean’ and all those great classics that he was a part of. And it’s, like, what is so wrong in that? Great music doesn’t date. It’s like saying that you take a piece of classical music and you put it in a rock band. Is that disrespectful? Is that terrible? You’re just moving forward with technology. That’s all.”
Jack concluded: “And as I said, either we’re gonna do it or someone else is in 50, 20 years, whatever. This will become the norm for every well-known person. Just like when people started creating fucking web sites for their bands.”
Sharon added: “Listen, ABBA have a show, and they’re not even fucking dead. They’ve got three shows in London. Three shows. One avatar, ‘Mamma Mia!’, and then there’s another one that they have like a supper club thing that they do. Three shows in London at the same time.”
Digital Ozzy will appear in Proto Luma units — described as life-size, patented holoportation devices that can display live or pre-recorded content with its 86-inch multi-touch volumetric display, 4K resolution, high fidelity speakers, and spatial computing / conversational A.I. capabilities — in the U.K. and U.S. beginning late summer.
Proto is the original hologram and A.I. spatial compute platform used globally in entertainment, healthcare, education, finance, retail and more. Hyperreal‘s Digital DNA technology is the only patented end-to-end system for capturing and performing an authenticated avatar across likeness, voice, motion, and performance character.
“Every element of this avatar was built exclusively from authenticated, approved source material: curated, consented, and controlled by the people who love him most,” Hyperreal CEO Remington Scott said in a statement to BLABBERMOUTH.NET. “This is a living performance, not a rendering; and it draws from nothing that wasn’t given willingly. We have the enthusiastic participation of Ozzy‘s family, and that changes everything about what this can be.”
“It’s an honor to be trusted to bring one of true gods of rock back to the world to continue to connect with fans — thank you, Sharon and Jack!” added David Nussbaum, founder of Proto Hologram. “We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t know both of our company’s technologies will create an experience that truly extends Ozzy‘s presence, his heart and soul, into the future.”
“The things that you can do with that are just endless,” Ozzy‘s wife and manager Sharon Obourne said on May 20 during a talk called “The Enduring Legacy Of A Rock Icon And His Family: Ozzy Osbourne And The Osbournes” on the License Global main stage at Licensing Expo at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.
Hyperreal previously created a life-sized, A.I.-powered avatar of late comic book legend Stan Lee that interacted with attendees at last year’s Los Angeles Comic Con. Comic Con visitors were able to pay $15 to speak to the holographic Lee, who responded in what appeared to be accurate A.I.-generated responses in Lee‘s familiar voice. Hyperreal had also developed digital avatars of Paul McCartney, the Notorious B.I.G. and Mike Tyson.
“It’s kind of scary how it’s really very accurate,” Ozzy‘s son Jack said at Licensing Expo. “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. You could shoot a template for a commercial … literally prompt what you want digital Ozzy to do in that commercial and you just drop it in. It’s that simple now.”
“You can ask Ozzy anything, and he will answer you in his own voice — and the answers will be what Ozzy would have said,” Sharon added. “We’re going to take it all around the world. People can talk to him and he will talk back.”
During an appearance earlier this year on an episode of “The Osbournes” podcast, which was recorded in early February, Ozzy Osbourne‘s manager and widow Sharon Osbourne offered more information about the long-awaited return of Ozzfest. Confirming that she is still planning to revive Ozzfest next year, Sharon said that the festival will launch at Villa Park, the home ground of the Aston Villa Football Club, in Birmingham, United Kingdom. “We wanna do two days in Aston Villa and then come to America,” she explained. “And we wanna hear from everyone where we should go in America. And also we’ve gotta find a lot of young, new talent, because that’s what (Ozzy) would want.”
After Sharon and Ozzy‘s son Jack noted that Ozzfest will return in 2027 as a two-day event at Villa Park, followed by “two days in North America somewhere”, Sharon said: “Yeah. And then see how it does. And then if people want it, we’ll be there in the following years.”
Sharon added that although Ozzfest won’t be a traveling festival in 2027, there are tentative plans to take it on the road in 2028 and beyond, provided that the demand is there.
Regarding what made Ozzfest so special, Sharon said: “It was more fun. When you go to other festivals, everybody’s so uptight. But that was always the thing about our festival. There was never anybody jockeying for position or thought they were better than anyone else. It was a summer camp.” Sharon also added that she wants to “see Rob Halford there”, apparently hinting that JUDAS PRIEST could appear at a future Ozzfest installment.
Sharon Osbourne has previously confirmed to MetalXS that there are plans to put on another edition of the Ozzfest traveling festival in 2027. “ Yes, absolutely. Yeah, we’re gonna do it,” she said during a February 6 appearance at MIDEM 2026 at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France. “Well, the last one we did was 2018. It was just a month before Ozzy got sick, and that was at the Forum in L.A. And there was no plans to stop it. We were still gonna do it, but Ozzy couldn’t. And Ozzy and I would talk about it, and he’d say, ‘Do you think Ozzfest would work without me?’ And I’m, like, ‘Yeah, it’s a brand. It will work without you.’ And he said, ‘We should do it.'”
This past January, Sharon told Billboard magazine in an interview that she was considering putting on another edition of the Ozzfest traveling festival.
“I’ve been talking to Live Nation about bringing (Ozzfest) back recently,” she said. “It was something Ozzy was very passionate about: giving young talent a stage in front of a lot of people. We really started metal festivals in this country. It was (replicated but) never done with the spirit of what ours was, because ours was a place for new talent. It was like summer camp for kids.”
According to Sharon, the next iteration of Ozzfest could launch as soon as 2027. However, she added that she a new vision for it: “I’d like to mix up the genres,” she said.
During the same chat, Sharon said that she is working with Live Nation to launch a classical tour of BLACK SABBATH‘s catalog, performed by local orchestras and set to state-of-the-art visuals.
Ozzfest started 30 years ago and was the first national music festival of its kind dedicated to hard rock music.
The event has not been a traveling festival in the U.S. since 2007’s “free” edition. The show morphed into a one-off event in Dallas in 2008, took 2009 off and played just six cities in 2010.
Over 17,000 concert-goers were in attendance for 2017’s all-day Ozzfest, which was headlined by Ozzy, while Rob Zombie closed out the next day’s Knotfest bill.
2017 was the second year Ozzy‘s Ozzfest had merged with SLIPKNOT‘s Knotfest for a two-day heavy metal juggernaut.
Last November Sharon Osbourne says that BLACK SABBATH‘s farewell concert raised $11 million — a far cry from the “ridiculous” initial reports that the event brought in nearly $200 million.
In the days after the July 5 event, dubbed “Back To The Beginning”, the event’s musical director, Tom Morello, shared an Instagram post stating that roughly $190 million (140 million British pounds) would be donated to charity from the concert. Billboard magazine later also reported that the event had raised $190 million, while The Guardian reported that the pay-per-view livestream of the event reached nearly six million fans, generating an estimated $150 million in revenue. At the time, it was expected that the funds would be distributed equally to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorn Children’s Hospice and Cure Parkinson’s — an organization dedicated to finding a cure for the disease Osbourne had lived with since 2019.
Sharon offered insight into the actual amount raised by “Back To The Beginning” while speaking to her children Jack and Kelly during the latest episode of “The Osbournes” podcast. Addressing the erroneous initial reports of the net amount of money generated by the concert, Sharon said: “If one show could have raised… I mean, the articles were saying it was up to, like 190 million. It’s, like, any artist, just do one big show, film it and you can retire just on one show. No, it was nowhere near, and I wish that it was, but we are living in reality, in the real world.”
Asked by Jack what “Back To The Beginning” actually raised, Sharon said: “It raised 11 million. But with the cost, ’cause we paid the cost of bringing everybody in, everybody out, accommodation, everything. And no one got paid. Nobody asked for a penny. They gave their time, their efforts, everything for free. People were just — oh God — so generous.”
Last September, Sharon Osbourne has thanked fans for their “overwhelming love and support” following the death of her husband, legendary BLACK SABBATH singer Ozzy Osbourne.
On Friday (September 12), Sharon took to her Instagram to write: “I’m still having trouble finding the words to express how grateful I am for the overwhelming love and support you’ve shown on social media. Your comments, posts, and tributes have brought me more comfort than you know. None of it has gone unnoticed, in fact, it’s carried me through many nights.”
Sharon‘s post included a video of her and her daughter Kelly on a recent falconry outing where they got up close and hands-on with birds of prey.
“Though I’m still finding my footing, I wanted to share some glorious creatures I had the chance to spend an afternoon with,” Sharon continued. “The connection you make with these powerful birds is built entirely on trust and confidence. They’ll choose to perch on you only if they sense you are safe and unafraid of them. It’s a bond I know all too well, and the experience was nothing short of magical.
“I love you all, and I thank you deeply for the otherworldly amount of love you continue to send my way.”
Ozzy died on July 22 of a heart attack, his death certificate revealed. The certificate filed in London also said Osbourne suffered from coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s disease.
A private funeral service for Ozzy was held on July 31 on the 250-acre grounds of the house the legendary BLACK SABBATH singer and his wife bought in 1993 in Buckinghamshire, England. Only 110 of the singer’s friends and family members attended the service, including his SABBATH bandmates, Robert Trujillo (METALLICA),Rob Zombie, Zakk Wylde, Marilyn Manson and Corey Taylor (SLIPKNOT).
The day before the private funeral, thousands of fans gathered in the streets of Birmingham to pay tribute to Ozzy. Sharon, along with their children Aimée, Kelly and Jack, joined mourners for the emotional tribute.
A little over two months ago, Ozzy reunited with the rest of the original BLACK SABBATH lineup — guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward — for what was his final performance at the “Back To The Beginning” charity concert in their original hometown of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
At “Back To The Beginning”, Ozzy played a five-song set with his solo band — consisting of guitarist Zakk Wylde, bassist Mike Inez, keyboardist Adam Wakeman and drummer Tommy Clufetos — before being joined by Iommi, Butler and Ward for four classic SABBATH songs: “War Pigs”, “Iron Man”, “N.I.B.” and “Paranoid”.
Ozzy‘s solo set consisted of four songs from Osbourne‘s 1980 solo debut album “Blizzard Of Ozz” — “I Don’t Know”, “Mr. Crowley”, “Suicide Solution” and “Crazy Train” — along with his 1991 “No More Tears” ballad “Mama, I’m Coming Home”.
The 76-year-old heavy metal singer sang while seated on a black throne and appeared overcome with emotion at times. “You have no idea how I feel. Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he told the crowd.
Social media