Jack Osbourne has addressed the backlash from fans over the creation of an AI version of his father, Ozzy Osbourne.
It was back in May that Jack, along with his mother, Sharon, announced the creation of an interactive digital avatar of Ozzy. “He will exist digitally as himself for as long as we have computers,” Jack said at the time. “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.”
Ozzy’s fans overwhelmingly reacted with outrage to the announcement, claiming it tarnished the Prince of Darkness’ legacy.
In a recent appearance on the Great Company With Jamie Laing podcast, Jack addressed fans’ anger over the project.
“The backlash, it was my own fault,” he admitted. “We’d just kind of figured this thing out, that we were gonna do it, and I guess I wasn’t properly armed with the way to properly explain what it was.”
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Jack further noted that his father’s likeness would not be used as some kind of marketing pawn. “I think people thought that next thing it’s gonna be Ozzy Osbourne selling cell phones. No.”.
“A lot of people are doing this now,” Jack continued, explaining the changing landscape of media. “Creating the AI model and creating the digital fingerprint of whoever – whether it’s my father or Bob Marley’s people are doing it, and Michael Jackson’s team are doing it.”
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As Jack contended, creating the Ozzy avatar allows the Osbourne family to have control over the late rocker’s image.
“By kind of creating this digital fingerprint, you ultimately will own the digital IP and image of that person. And so as to what it can be used for now, yeah, there’s a handful of things… But down the road, it’s where things are going. It’s no different than saying, ‘I wanna own my images of my father. I wanna own his intellectual property.”’
Ultimately, Jack said, the project was just smart business.
“It’s just another avenue. And the fact that AI is what it is, it’s not going anywhere, it’s not changing. It was our choice to go, ‘Hey, we should be out in front of this, and we should not be on the back foot with having this kind of new pillar of entertainment properly locked down.'”
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