Holograms have been the future for a while now. The most recent celebrity to be immortalized via this technology is the late Ozzy Osbourne. During the second day of the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas this past Wednesday, Sharon Osbourne and Jack Osbourne revealed that they've partnered with the company HYPERREAL to configure "the digital DNA of Ozzy Osbourne, voice, image [and] movement" into a hologram avatar. According to Billboard, the life-sized interactive Ozzy will appear in the US and UK later this summer. Frankly, I am scared.
"It's kind of scary how it's really very accurate," Jack said, according to License Global magazine. "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."
This AI-generated hologram will be interactive. "You can ask Ozzy anything, and he will answer you in his own voice, and the answers will be what Ozzy would have said," Sharon said. "We're going to take it all around the world. People can talk to him and he will talk back." As nice as it is to pay homage to Ozzy's legacy, it's a bit eerie. It feels like a slippery slope, trying to maintain mass-produced consumer hysteria and grief's strange ongoing process. But the Osbourne's piss me off, so if Sharon wants to ruin her husband's legacy with a strange technology money grab — go off.
HYPERREAL is somewhat experienced in making these celebrity avatars. They worked on avatars of Paul McCartney, Notorious B.I.G., soccer star Lionel Messi and Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee. Billie Eilish also used hologram technology for her recent concert film Hit Me Hard And Soft, working with Proto Hologram. And although it looks really cool, as if she's coming out the film itself to talk in strange white box to advertise her film personally to you, it's not interactive.
