Going by the current discourse regarding the Osbourne family’s decision to digitally resurrect the late heavy metal icon Ozzy Osbourne as an A.I.-powered digital avatar later this year, the initial reaction has been by significantly mixed.
The family signed off to license his likeness to the company Hyperreal, who have experience in the digital avatar concert industry. Now in partnership with Proto Luma, life-size digital incarnations of Ozzy are expected to begin cropping up using Proto Luma‘s holoportation technology later this summer.
The companies have pooled together so-called “digital DNA” to recreate the beloved heavy metal pioneer in digital form, with his widow Sharon stating of this venture earlier this week:
“You can ask 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 it all around the world. People can talk to him and he will talk back.”
Sharon further asserted that this endeavor is part of the family’s bid to keep the legacy of Ozzy alive for years to come, offering, “Elvis died 50 years ago, and everybody knows Elvis. I just want that for Ozzy.”
Having no doubt seeing the divisive reception to their plans, Jack Osbourne addressed the matter in a livestreamed video shared yesterday, May 23rd. While that livestream was more of a fan Q&A and chat, Osbourne did respond to a fan who asked if his family are expecting a “mixed reaction” to the avatar incarnation of their late patriarch. Osbourne responded [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“Here’s the thing: it’s gonna be so tasteful what we’re doing. It’s not gonna be fucking lame… And it’s really complex what we’re doing. It’s not like you can sit there and like… It’s really complex what we’re doing. This isn’t just like hooking up an image of my dad to ChatGPT. This is going to be… Yeah. 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 utilized.
But it’s awesome. It’s really cool, and it’s something that I think my dad would be into. ‘Cause we actually talked about it before he passed, about doing something like this. So, yeah, I know he would be into this.”
