SKF advert review – let’s hope this dull AI Greta Garbo is not the future — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- SKF released a 99-second TV ad built around an AI-generated likeness of Greta Garbo, in which the screen legend — key-lit and styled like a movie star — drones through a script praising the Swedish ball-bearings company's products
- The ad leans on a real historical link: in 1921, a 15-year-old Greta Gustafsson (Garbo's birth name) appeared in a promotional film for SKF, an offshoot of Stockholm PUB department store clothing commercials that launched her film career
- The AI Garbo reportedly derives from images and pictures existing elsewhere rather than from Garbo's own film appearances, a structure the review suggests may let SKF sidestep movie studios that hold copyright on her on-screen likeness and negotiate instead with distant relatives
- SKF says it is open to licensing the AI Garbo for other projects, and the reviewer flags Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, and Rita Hayworth as candidates for similar revivals if their distant relatives can be persuaded
- The review characterizes the result as a 'classy TV shopping channel' parody — a figure who resembles Garbo in silk blouses and hauteur but lacks the 'distraite sensuality' and deadpan comedy that defined her — and closes by calling for stronger guardrails against AI use of deceased celebrities' images
Why it matters: The review's sharpest point is structural: by sourcing the AI likeness from generic existing images rather than Garbo's films, SKF may have engineered a path around studio copyright to use only family consent, meaning any deceased star whose distant relatives agree could be commercially reanimated — turning a niche ball-bearings ad into a test case for AI celebrity rights.
Ask SkimNews
