Rod Stewart honours Ozzy Osbourne with AI fantasy

At a recent Atlanta concert, Rod Stewart honoured the late Ozzy Osbourne in a strikingly unconventional way, by showing an AI-generated video of Ozzy taking selfies in heaven with late music icons. The tribute played on a giant screen behind Stewart as he performed ‘Forever Young,’ depicting a cartoonish Ozzy grinning alongside legends like Kurt Cobain, Prince, Michael Jackson, and Bob Marley, all united by a floating selfie stick among the clouds.

The video, originally captured by a concertgoer on TikTok, featured Ozzy smiling and posing with other departed stars like Tina Turner and Freddie Mercury, turning heaven into an eternal celebrity photo op. Instead of a traditional photo montage, Stewart’s new approach created a digital afterlife where jam sessions and selfies with rock’s finest never end, implying perhaps that Ozzy has already joined them.

That marks a notable shift from Stewart’s earlier tributes to Osbourne, which relied on simple archival photographs. The AI animation, however strange, seems to reflect a deeper attempt to celebrate Ozzy’s spirit in a uniquely modern way, courtesy, presumably, of a tech-savvy relative.

Following Ozzy’s death on 22 July, Stewart shared a heartfelt farewell on Instagram: ‘Bye, Ozzy. Sleep well, my friend. I’ll see you up there, later rather than sooner.’ Judging by this tribute, he’s already imagining what that reunion might look like.

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