SKF brings back Greta Garbo as an AI spokeswoman for bearings

Greta Garbo, the Hollywood star who died in 1990, is the face of a new ad for the Swedish bearings maker SKF Group, built entirely from an AI-generated likeness. The 99-second spot went out on September 30, 2026, and runs through a script in which "AI Garbo" pitches frictionless magnetic bearings before signing off with her line from Grand Hotel: "I want to be alone," according to a review in the Guardian.

SKF's own press release ties the campaign to its history. Before she was Garbo, a 15-year-old Greta Gustafsson appeared in a 1921 promotional film for the Gothenburg company. The new ad sells SKF's magnetic bearings, used in data centers, cooling systems and semiconductor plants, alongside a revived 1919 financing model that lets customers pay for the technology out of the energy it saves. "By bringing Greta back, we hope to open more eyes to frictionless and energy-efficient technology," Per Nilsson, SKF's global head of communication and brand, said in the release.

What tools built AI Garbo?

The production team avoided copyrighted photos and film of Garbo entirely. Instead, staff described her features from observation and generated her image with Seedream 5 Pro and Nano Banana Pro, then animated it with Seedance 2, Seedance 2.5 and Kling, according to a New York Times report syndicated by DNYUZ, citing SKF spokesman Carl Bjernstam. A human actor performed the role with the AI likeness overlaid, and Garbo's voice, harder to replicate than her face, was trained on archival recordings, the Guardian reported.

"At SKF, we want our communication to be as innovative as our technology," Bjernstam said. He added that Garbo's family and her estate's licensing company, Harriet Brown & Company Inc., had approved the project. "We understand that people have questions, and we respect that views will differ," he said.

A relative is "flabbergasted," a critic is unmoved

Craig Reisfield, Garbo's great-nephew and one of three relatives who manage her legacy, told the Guardian he was "flabbergasted" watching the result: "the mannerisms that they could capture and manipulate, her dress, facial images and even her voice. It was startling what they could do and very impactful." Asked whether an AI Garbo could take other film roles, Reisfield said he would not rule it out: "It's pretty incredible and lifelike. So what's to say that you can't bring Greta Garbo back in some kind of fashion in a film role?" He said the estate's custodians were "very discerning" about partnerships and aim to "preserve, protect, and enhance" her legacy.

The Guardian's own review was harsher, calling the spot "bland, mediocre undeadness" built on a "dull and humourless script." A separate Guardian news report noted the technique has drawn comparisons to the "ghostploitation" label critics applied to a posthumous AI likeness of the actor Val Kilmer, and that Garbo's image has appeared posthumously before in campaigns for Ferragamo, Gucci and Louis Vuitton - though the SKF spot is her first appearance in moving images since her death.

Reisfield's openness to further licensing, paired with a studio-grade likeness built without a single copyrighted frame of the original actress, points to where this fight moves next: not whether an estate can license a dead star's image, but how far that estate will let it go.

Clearing a dead actor's likeness for commercial use starts with the estate's licensing agent, not a film studio: SKF worked through Harriet Brown & Company Inc., the firm that controls Garbo's name, image and voice rights.