A year after his death, Ozzy Osbourne is set to be recreated as a lifesized AI-powered avatar, his family have announced – but fans aren’t entirely happy.

The late rocker’s son Jack and his wife, Sharon, announced on 20 May at Licensing Expo, an event for brands in Las Vegas, that the family had partnered with tech companies Hyperreal and Proto Hologram to create an Ozzy Osbourne avatar.

The Black Sabbath frontman died in July 2025 at the age of 76.

“It’s kind of scary how it’s really very accurate,” Jack Osbourne told the audience 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.”

Sharon Osbourne added: “We’re going to take it all around the world. People can talk to him and he will talk back.

“Elvis died 50 years ago and everybody knows Elvis. I just want that for Ozzy.”

Hyperreal claims the lifesized avatar will be able “have conversations with fans and move, speak, and respond as Ozzy would” and will begin appearing on interactive touchscreens that will be placed in yet-to-be disclosed locations in the US and UK later this year.

The Hyperreal chief executive, Remington Scott, told Billboard that the avatar “was built exclusively from authenticated, approved source material: curated, consented, and controlled by the people who love him most”.

“This is a living performance, not a rendering; and it draws from nothing that wasn’t given willingly,” Scott said. “We have the enthusiastic participation of Ozzy’s family, and that changes everything about what this can be.”

However, the announcement has attracted criticism from fans of Osbourne and Black Sabbath, who have criticised the deal as disrespectful and distasteful and speculated that using Osbourne’s image in advertising would be against his wishes.

Jack Osbourne, who recently named his newborn daughter Ozzy in honour of his father, responded to the criticism during a YouTube livestream on Saturday.

“Here’s the thing, it’s gonna be so tasteful what we’re doing. It’s not gonna be fucking lame,” Jack said. “It’s really complex what we’re doing. This isn’t just like hooking up an image of my dad to ChatGPT. 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 utilised.”

He claimed he had discussed similar ideas with his father before his death.

“It’s really cool and it’s something that I think my dad would be into,” he said. “We actually talked about it before he passed, about doing something like this … I know he would be into this.”

Osbourne will not be the first musician to receive the hologram treatment after death, following the likes of Tupac Shakur, Roy Orbison, Maria Callas and Michael Jackson.

A touring Amy Winehouse hologram announced in 2018, seven years after her death from alcohol poisoning, attracted criticism from those who argued that an artist who disliked touring should be allowed to rest – but the project was later canned due to “unique challenges and sensitivities”.