Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | May 22, 2026
Remember when, a few years ago, pre-COVID, all of these record companies and musicians’ estates began insisting that the next frontier of live music was hologram version of our favourite artists? We saw Tupac’s digital ghost and thought it was kind of cool and all of a sudden we were being told to pay hundreds of dollars for more of that? ABBA made it work but they’re all alive and consented to the treatment. Amy Winehouse didn’t (although mercifully those plans from her awful dad never came to fruition.) Now, less than a year after his death, Ozzy Osbourne will be revived for brand deals and “immersive avatar concerts.”
Jack and Sharon Osbourne, the late singer’s son and wife/manager, appeared at the Licensing Expo 2026 in Las Vegas to headline an event called “The Enduring Legacy of a Rock Icon and His Family: Ozzy Osbourne and The Osbournes.” The family has partnered with Hyperreal, a company that describes itself as “innovation leaders” in “ethical AI” and reviving dead celebrities, like Stan Lee and The Notorious B.I.G. Now, they plan to bring back Ozzy for all manner of money-making activities… I mean precious ways to strengthen his legacy as an artist.
Said Jack, “He will exist digitally as himself for as long as we have computers. Technology has come such a long way that 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.” According to Licence Global, Jack was prompted to get into the world of digital necromancy with his own dad after having a conversation with a woman who told him him that her 3-year-old grandson couldn’t stop singing “Crazy Train.” “We could make baby onesies, and we could make Depends,” he realized! Now they can make a digital Ozzy avatar that can be trucked around the world without complaint.
“You can ask Ozzy anything, and he will answer you in his own voice - and the answers will be what Ozzy would have said,” said Sharon, taking time away from supporting the far-right in Britain. “We’re going to take it all around the world. People can talk to him, and he will talk back.”
This is all so ghoulish, and somehow even more gross and creepy than when celebrity estates plunder their likeness for a quick buck. Slapping their face on onesies is weird enough but making a digital version that will say and do whatever you want it to, including promoting stuff the person never would have done in life, is surely straight-up posthumous exploitation? I remember reading reports of an infirm and elderly Stan Lee being wheeled around comic book conventions and thinking it shouldn’t have been allowed, and now some company gets to plunder his legacy and claim it’s for his own good?
Ozzy’s legacy goes not need this. But of course it’s not about his cultural footprint. It’s about his economic one. Spotify streams aren’t enough to keep the wallets fat. You have to squeeze every penny from him, in life and death. Being the godfather of metal isn’t as profitable as post-life product placement and AI cloning. I’d rather never listen to Black Sabbath again than give Sharon another penny of my money through this crap.
