Greta Garbo has returned to the screen in a 99-second television advert for Svenska Kullagerfabriken, the Swedish ball-bearings company better known as SKF. The unusual part is that the Hollywood legend died in 1990, making this appearance a digital recreation created 36 years after her death.
The advert reaches back to a real connection between Garbo and SKF. In 1921, Greta Gustafsson, the future Garbo, appeared in a promotional film for the company. The new commercial turns that early appearance into a line about her final screen role: “One of my first films was for SKF and now I’m back for my last.”
An old company connection gets a new digital ending
The voice comes from an AI Greta Garbo, not from a new performance by the actor herself. Her likeness was created with AI imaging technology, including Google’s Nano Banana Pro, and the advert presents that likeness as Garbo returning to the company where her screen history began.
That choice gives the commercial a clear structure. It links the 1921 promotional film with a modern advert, then uses Garbo’s image to bridge the two moments. The result is a ball-bearing commercial built around a screen icon whose original film career ended long before this technology existed.
But the connection also creates a strange gap between the real Garbo and the figure shown in the advert. The AI likeness is not taken from Garbo’s own movie appearances as a new performance. Her last film instead comes from images and pictures that exist elsewhere, which turns the commercial into a reconstruction assembled from her surviving image.
Peter Bradshaw’s review, published on Wed 30 Sep 2026 at 06.00 BST and modified at 07.29 BST, describes the result in blunt terms: “This Garbo is a bizarre soignée figure, a Stepford robo-star, a Hallmark-greeting-card parody.” The language captures the central problem with the advert: it wants the authority and glamour of Garbo, but its central performer is an AI likeness rather than the actor herself.
What happens when a famous image keeps working?
The advert presents Garbo as if she has returned to complete a film connection that began in 1921. Yet the person on screen is a likeness created through AI imaging, assembled from images and pictures rather than from a fresh performance. That makes the commercial feel less like a comeback and more like a new use for an old image.
Garbo’s relatives say her doppelganger could now be used for more glamorous roles. Their comment points to the wider direction suggested by this advert: once an AI likeness exists, the same digital figure may move beyond one company’s commercial and into other kinds of entertainment or advertising.
That possibility gives the SKF advert more weight than its subject might suggest. A ball-bearing company has not simply used a historical connection to sell its product. It has placed an AI version of a Hollywood legend at the centre of a new screen appearance, 36 years after her death, and asked viewers to accept that likeness as Garbo returning.
The commercial therefore rests on two ideas at once. One is a documented link between Garbo and SKF, dating back to her appearance as Greta Gustafsson in 1921. The other is the belief that AI can recreate a recognisable public image well enough to give that link a new ending.
Those ideas do not sit together smoothly. The first belongs to Garbo’s life and early film work. The second belongs to a later technology that uses existing images and pictures to create a likeness. The advert joins them, but the join remains visible.
Robert Booth’s article about Garbo’s likeness was published on Wed 30 Sep 2026 at 01.00 EDT. Its focus on the digital double, alongside Bradshaw’s review of the advert, underlines what makes the commercial unusual: this is not simply archival footage or a reference to a famous actor. It is an AI-generated Garbo starring again.
SKF has made the old connection part of a new commercial story. Whether viewers see that as a clever return or a hollow imitation depends on how much of Garbo they believe remains when only the image comes back.
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