Swedish Firm SKF Uses AI to Bring Late Star Greta Garbo Back in Ad

Swedish ball bearing maker SKF has released an ad made with AI. It recreates Greta Garbo, one of the most famous stars of Hollywood's golden age. Garbo left the screen in 1941 and passed away in 1990.

The AI version did not use any archived photos or old footage. It was created from text prompts only. The team used ByteDance's Seedream 5 Pro and Google's Gemini Nano Banana Pro for images, Seedance and Kuaishou's Kling AI for motion, and trained the voice from authorized recordings of Garbo's real voice.

The project was approved by Garbo's estate and her family. AI expert Henry Ajder calls this trend "synthetic resurrection" and says AI has made it far more powerful. But not everyone approves. One film critic gave the ad a poor rating, and actor George Clooney has also worried about his image being misused by AI after his death.