SKF advert review – reviving Greta Garbo with AI is a dull, uncomfortable stunt

A new advertising campaign for SKF, the Swedish engineering company, resurrects the image of Hollywood icon Greta Garbo using artificial intelligence, and the result, according to a new review, amounts to little more than 99 dull, humourless seconds that give audiences yet another reason to be wary of the technology.

Garbo, the Swedish-American actor renowned for her performances in Hollywood's golden age and for her famously reclusive later life, is reconstructed digitally for the advert. The review notes the irony of the exercise, recalling that Garbo's own oft-quoted desire to be left alone has itself become a cultural touchstone, most memorably parodied in a 1970 sketch by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, in which Cook impersonated a reclusive celebrity shouting through a megaphone from the back of a truck.

The use of AI to recreate deceased public figures for commercial purposes has become an increasingly common, and increasingly scrutinised, practice in advertising. Campaigns that digitally resurrect actors, musicians and other cultural figures have drawn criticism from artists' estates, industry unions and commentators who argue the practice raises unresolved questions about consent, likeness rights and an actor's control over their own image after death.

According to the review, the SKF advert does little to advance the case for such AI recreations, offering an underwhelming and largely joyless execution that fails to justify the technological novelty involved. The reviewer suggests the spot exemplifies a broader trend of AI-generated content in advertising that prioritises technical spectacle over genuine creative or emotional impact.

The advert's use of Garbo also comes at a moment of wider debate within the entertainment and advertising industries about where to draw ethical and legal lines around AI-generated likenesses of real people, living or dead, a debate that shows little sign of resolving as the technology becomes cheaper and more accessible to advertisers.