SKF brings digital Greta Garbo back to the screen

A family connection, and a familiar face

SKF is headquartered in Gothenburg. Garbo’s second film role was in a 1921 advertising film connected to the company; the new commercial puts her digital double among shots of bearings.

Garbo’s great-nephew Reisfield, a Swedish American who once worked as her driver and saw her at family gatherings in New York, said he was stunned by the result. He praised the likeness’s mannerisms, clothes, face and voice, and said seeing it moved him because he had known her personally.

The commercial’s creators built the likeness with AI prompts, including models from China’s Seedream and Google’s Nano Banana Pro. They did not feed the models photographs or video of Garbo, since those materials are protected by copyright. Instead, they described her appearance in text, including her icy blue eyes and wavy blonde bob. The actor performed the role, and the AI image was overlaid on the footage; her voice was reconstructed from a recording in an early film.

Greta Garbo and John Barrymore in Grand Hotel. Her famous line ‘I want to be alone’ comes from the 1932 MGM film. Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

Source: theguardian.com

The result appears to avoid the uncanny valley, the unease that can arise when an artificial face approaches realism without quite reaching it. But the writing may be less convincing. In one scene, digital Garbo says friction wastes about 20% of all the energy in the world—a line the Russian account compares to Liz Truss’s outrage over the “disgrace” of importing British cheese.

The next role is the bigger question

Garbo’s screen career already spanned a major technological shift: she began in silent films, moved to sound, and became a box-office draw. Reisfield said he would not rule out further projects for her digital likeness. Asked whether Garbo herself might have embraced AI acting, he argued that her willingness to move with cinema’s changes made the idea plausible.

The commercial is not her first posthumous use in advertising. Ferragamo, Gucci and Louis Vuitton have used her image. But it is the first time a digital Garbo has been shown in motion.

Hollywood’s AI activity is widening: major studios are investing in AI startups and working with new AI studios; directors including Ron Howard and Paul Schrader are making films with AI; and newer filmmakers such as Kavan-kid and Gossip Goblin are using it to build large audiences outside the traditional studio system.

The rights managers for Garbo’s voice, name, image and public persona say they want to protect her legacy and are selective about partners. That selectivity matters, but it does not answer the question the ad raises: who gets to decide which roles a dead performer would have taken?

I think the commercial’s most revealing detail is not how lifelike Garbo looks, but how easily her likeness can be made to sell a product. The spot closes with a line associated with her screen persona: “I want to be alone,” from Grand Hotel. The joke lands because the technology can put her back on screen; the tension is that it cannot tell us whether she would have wanted to be there.