The woman who was confirmed to be the mysterious figure on the cover of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut has announced that she has created a new rock opera, inspired by AI and Alice in Wonderland.
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The album was released in 1970, and for decades, the elusive woman pictured standing by a 15th-century water mill in Oxfordshire was unidentified. Then, in 2020, Rolling Stone shared a feature piece that identified her as model Louisa Livingstone.
Since then, she has been releasing music of her own too, including two tracks inspired by her time on the Black Sabbath cover: ‘Witch Woman’ and ‘The Woman by the Mill’.
More recently, she has been releasing music under the alias Indreba, including a five-song album called ‘Alice’ which dropped last month.
Now, in a new interview with Rolling Stone, she has discussed how that album came to be a rock opera inspired by the rise of artificial intelligence and Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland.
The ‘Witch’ From Black Sabbath’s Classic Album Cover Is Now a Musician
"I still find it a little bizarre at times being the Black Sabbath 'witch woman' since of course I'm also a lot of other things," Louisa Livingstone says. https://t.co/si6HYt4vjF
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) September 8, 2026
The inspiration came to her as a memory of her father reading the classic 1871 novel to her as a child, and over time she has seen the premise through the lens of panpsychism – the notion that all objects and items possess some form of consciousness.
That, she shared, led to her exploring the narrative of “myself (or Alice) falling in love with AI”, but going on to realise that it is “just a beautiful illusion along with everything else on the internet”.
She also told Rolling Stone that the album was about “getting back to being oneself and nature”, and that she did use some AI assistance to produce the album.
“I’ve been experimenting a little with cloning my own voice and seeing what different things I can do with the help of AI,” she said, also adding that there are elements of AI instruments and vocals.
“I used to be very judgmental about AI like many people, but it’s a tool that you can use to create either absolute rubbish or ‘slop’ as it’s called, to something really good and interesting,” she added. “It’s still down to the user and their input. It will always reflect the person who is using it and how well or badly they use it and their musical tastes and knowledge.”
In the original Rolling Stone report that identified Livingstone as the person on the cover, photographer Keith Macmillan said he chose her for the role because she’s five feet tall, and as a result, the landscape around her would look bigger.
“She wasn’t wearing any clothes under that cloak because we were doing things that were slightly more risqué, but we decided none of that worked,” Macmillan said at the time. “Any kind of sexuality took away from the more foreboding mood. But she was a terrific model. She had amazing courage and understanding of what I was trying to do.”
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