SKF uses AI to digitally recreate Hollywood icon Greta Garbo

Swedish ball-bearing manufacturer SKF has released an advertisement featuring a digitally reconstructed version of the late Hollywood icon Greta Garbo. The 99-second spot uses artificial intelligence to recreate the Swedish-American actress, who passed away in 1990.

To navigate copyright concerns, the production team did not use archival footage or photos to generate the likeness. Instead, they utilized text prompts to create the visual image through models such as ByteDance’s Seedream 5 Pro and Google’s Gemini Nano Banana Pro, while Kuaishou’s Kling AI assisted with motion. The actress's voice was recreated by training AI on a single authorized archival audio recording from her early career.

The project was produced with the permission of Garbo’s estate and family. Following the advertisement, one of Garbo’s heirs, Craig Reisfield, expressed being “flabbergasted” by the lifelike quality of the recreation, noting that he would not rule out the possibility of a future AI-assisted film appearance for the actress.