Ozzy Osbourne will return… in digital version. The rocker's heirs have announced that they have entered into a partnership with the companies Hyperreal and Proto Hologram. Purpose: To create an AI-animated hologram of Ozzy that will be able to converse with fans via stations located in the US and UK that contain life-size holograms.
The project, said the rocker's son Jack, contains “Ozzy's digital DNA, with his voice, his image, his movements” and “is almost scary with how precise it is”. You can ask the digital Ozzy anything and he, assures his wife Sharon, «will respond with his voice giving the answers that Ozzy would have given. We'll take it around the world and people will be able to talk to it.”
To create it, explained Remington Scott, CEO of Hyperreal which last year presented a digital avatar of Stan Lee, a proprietary technology called Digital DNA was used which allows the avatar to function in real time after collecting the data necessary for the creation of the avatars. “It can perform live, respond to audiences, exist in interactive environments.” This is not content uploaded in advance: thanks to AI “it is a living performance, built starting from authentic materials selected, authorized and controlled by people who were close to Ozzy”.
Sharon and Jack Osbourne spoke about the project at the 2026 Licensing Expo in Las Vegas during a panel titled “The Enduring Legacy of a Rock Icon and His Family: Ozzy Osbourne and the Osbournes.” «Elvis died 50 years ago and everyone still knows him», said the widow, «that's what I want to happen for Ozzy too».
As the news of Ozzy's avatar arrives, Kiss are preparing a virtual show like ABBA's in London. Is digital presence the last frontier of historical rock when its protagonists die or bands break up? According to Scott, «what Hyperreal and Proto are building goes beyond recordings, videos and photographs that tell the story of a moment: we are building a presence. People don't just love Ozzy for music, but also for giving himself to fans to the point that they felt they knew him. It's a rare thing worth preserving. We want a kid who discovers Ozzy in ten years to feel the same connection: not a museum piece, but Ozzy continuing to be Ozzy.”
