During a wide-ranging discussion on the latest episode of “The Osbournes” podcast, Ozzy Osbourne was asked if he would ever consider possibly making a song with a artificial intelligence (AI)-generated version of his late guitarist Randy Rhoads, and if not Randy, maybe another rock star like John Lennon (THE BEATLES), or somebody that Ozzy‘s always looked up to. Ozzy replied: “I haven’t considered it yet, but as far as me doing something like what the remaining BEATLES did with the John Lennon thing,” referencing the recently released “Now And Then”, featuring the voices of all four original BEATLES performers, with surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr essentially finishing what was initially an old demo recording by John Lennon, “that was a partial song and they cleaned the track up. I don’t think I have anything left of Randy Rhoads.”

Ozzy‘s wife and manager Sharon chimed in: “No, there’s nothing left that was properly recorded. There’s just like a couple of silly cassettes floating around that [people] go, ‘This is wonderful stuff.’ A cassette from 40 years ago is not gonna be great, taken from a rehearsal room.”

When Ozzy and Sharon‘s son Jack asked if Ozzy would be open to using AI to study the way Randy Rhoads played and make a new song in a similar style, Ozzy said: “Well, you know what? I’m open for anything, if it was good quality. ‘Cause, let’s face it, that BEATLES thing, ‘Now And Then’, wasn’t a BEATLES song; it was a John Lennon song.”

“The thing with AI, you can go, ‘Make me a new album.’ … But that’s the future,” Ozzy said. “The music scene’s gonna be completely different.”

Asked if it makes him nervous, Ozzy said simply: “No.”

As for Sharon, she said that she is definitely worried about people creating new music using generative AI. “Of course, but it’s, like, look, now everything, a lot, you can say half, well, a quarter of the music industry is done on computers anyway, not even in studios. … So it’s just gone from one computer to another,” she explained. “But I don’t like the idea of it at all.”

Ozzy added: “The cat’s out of the bag. You can’t undo it. The danger is people will misuse it. Because I’ll get like a formula for a song and I’ll put that formula in and I’ll keep on doing that.”

Circling back to “Now And Then” which, in part, used artificial intelligence to separate out Lennon‘s original vocals before incorporating McCartney and Starr‘s musical additions in the studio last year, Ozzy said: “Oh, it’s great. When I first heard it, I thought, ‘What the fuck is this?’ But then I heard it again and again. I have to listen to it every day now. But the only thing about that, it made me want more. It made me go, ‘Oh, fuck.’ And what it’s done, it’s rehashed all the old Lennon stuff, THE BEATLES stuff.”