AI Greta Garbo: What SKF’s Ad Means for Likeness Licensing

When AI is used to bring a deceased star back into advertising, what exactly needs to be licensed before a brand can use “the person”?

On September 30, 2026, SKF, the Swedish industrial technology company best known for its bearings, launched a global campaign featuring an AI recreation of Greta Garbo, the Swedish-born Hollywood star of the 1920s and ’30s. Garbo died in 1990, so the campaign brings her back to the screen 36 years after her death. According to The Guardian, Garbo’s likeness had appeared posthumously in fashion campaigns for Ferragamo, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton, but this is the first time it has been used in moving images.

What makes the project interesting is how it was made. According to press reports, the production team did not feed copyrighted photographs or film footage of Garbo into the AI models used to generate her appearance. Her voice, however, was recreated from recordings of her early films. And SKF states in its press release that the project was developed in collaboration with Garbo’s family and Harriet Brown & Company Inc.

If AI can recreate a person’s appearance without ingesting protected photos or footage, what is left to license? This case offers a useful lens on how identity itself may need to be licensed in the AI era.

SKF’s Campaign and Its Connection to Garbo

SKF announced the project in a press release titled “Greta Garbo is back.” The campaign runs under the concept “Pay Like It’s 1919” and features Garbo introducing SKF’s magnetic bearings, which the company says eliminate friction entirely by suspending a rotating shaft in a magnetic field.

The “1919” refers to a payment model SKF says it introduced that year, under which customers could finance new equipment through the energy savings it generated.

Garbo’s own connection to SKF dates from a little later. Before becoming an international star, she appeared around 1921 in a promotional film presenting Swedish industry to overseas audiences, and SKF was among the companies featured.

In other words, 1919 is the origin of SKF’s payment model, while around 1921 is when Garbo first appeared in a film promoting the company.

Primary source: SKF press release: “Greta Garbo is back – starring in SKF’s initiative to overcome friction”

SKF has also released the campaign film.

What Was Kept Out of the AI Pipeline, and What Was Still Used?

To understand the production, it helps to distinguish between saying archival material was “not used” and saying that protected photos and footage were not fed into the models that generated her appearance.

According to the Swedish film publication Moviezine, old films, photographs, and recordings served as reference material for the production. What the press materials emphasize is that protected archival imagery and footage were not fed into AI to generate the new visuals. The Guardian likewise reported that, because the material is protected by copyright, the creators did not feed Garbo’s film footage or photographs into the AI. Her appearance was instead built mainly from text prompts describing her features.

Nor was the performance generated entirely by AI. According to The Guardian, a real actor performed the role, and an AI-generated Garbo appearance was layered over that performance.

The production, in short, combined:

• Performance: a human actor
• Appearance: generated from text prompts, without feeding protected photos or footage into the models
• Voice: recreated from recordings of Garbo’s early films
• Direction and editing: a human production team

As for the tools, The Guardian named ByteDance’s Seedream and Google’s Nano Banana Pro. Reuters added that ByteDance’s Seedance and Kuaishou’s Kling AI were used for motion, and that licensed audio from Garbo’s early films was used for the voice and was the only archival material fed into the AI systems. These production details do not appear in SKF’s press release; they come from press reporting.

Copyright and Identity Are Becoming Separate Layers

If a scene from one of Garbo’s films were reused in an ad, the main legal questions would be copyright in that film and permission to use it.

Generative AI changes the structure of the problem. A production team can now create someone who looks like Garbo without feeding the original footage into a model at all. The relevant rights and interests begin to separate into distinct layers:

• copyright in existing photographs, films, and recordings
• the person’s likeness
• the person’s voice
• their name
• publicity value
• trademark and unfair competition
• posthumous personality interests and legacy management

Copying a work and recreating a person are becoming technically separable.

The distinction matters here because the visual and audio components were handled differently: the visuals reportedly avoided ingesting protected photos and footage, while the voice drew on existing film recordings.

Is Family Cooperation Enough?

SKF says the support of Garbo’s family and Harriet Brown & Company Inc. ensured that her legacy was handled responsibly. In that sense, the campaign is structurally different from an unauthorized deepfake.

But family cooperation does not automatically settle every legal question. Who holds which rights, and who can license them, depends on the person, the jurisdiction, the contracts involved, and the source material. Legal permission and cultural acceptance are also separate questions.

The Guardian‘s review was harsh, calling the ad dull and humorless and raising broader concerns about the use of celebrity likenesses through AI and the need for guardrails. By contrast, Craig Reisfield, one of three relatives who manage Garbo’s estate, praised the recreation as strikingly realistic and said he was open to using her in future film roles.

What Needs to Be Licensed? Designing a Digital Likeness Agreement

As brands use AI to recreate actors, celebrities, and other public figures, traditional advertising agreements may no longer be granular enough. A digital likeness agreement may need to address:

• which age or period of the person’s appearance may be recreated
• how far the appearance may be altered
• whether the person’s voice may be generated
• whether the digital version may say things the real person never said
• which media are covered, including video, still images, social media, games, and interactive content
• whether the person’s data may be used to train AI models
• whether generated models or digital assets may be reused in other projects
• what happens to models, source material, and training data when the agreement ends

Traditional ad agreements have focused on where, and for how long, a finished campaign can run. With generative AI, a digital version of a person can, in theory, produce an unlimited number of new performances.

That is why contracts may increasingly need to govern not only the use of a finished work, but the future capacity to generate new versions of the person.

If This Happened in Japan, Who Could Grant Permission?

For a Japan-based publication, the obvious next question is how this would play out under Japanese law.

On the same day SKF announced its Garbo campaign, the Tokyo District Court ruled in the Kenjiro Tsuda AI voice case. The court stated, as a general principle, that a person’s voice, like their portrait, is a symbol of the individual’s personality and may in certain circumstances be protected by the right of publicity. That points toward protection for living people. But what about the dead?

A report published by Japan’s Ministry of Justice in August 2026 says that there is currently no settled view on whether the right of publicity can be transferred or inherited, and that the question should be studied further in light of case law and other developments (p. 49).

The right not to have one’s portrait and similar attributes used without justification is a separate matter: the prevailing view is that this right lapses on death and does not pass to heirs.

Surviving family members may, however, have their own protectable interest when conduct infringes their feelings of reverence and affection for the deceased, and the report says the same framework can apply to the use of a deceased person’s voice (pp. 61–66).

Under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, the report also suggests that where a talent agency or similar entity continues to manage the commercialization of a person’s portrait after death, that entity may be able to bring a claim (p. 71).

In other words, Japanese law supports neither a simple rule that “family permission is enough” nor the idea that a deceased person’s likeness is free for anyone to use. Who has authority to license a deceased person’s identity may itself have to be examined right by right and case by case.

Reference (in Japanese): Ministry of Justice, Japan – Full text of the study group report

AI Creators’ View: The Next IP May Be the Person, Not the Work

The core IP assets of the content industry have traditionally been works: films, music, photographs, illustrations, and characters. Generative AI changes that. As systems learn to reproduce a person’s appearance, voice, expressions, movement, and manner of speaking, the attributes of the person themselves can become reusable creative assets.

That does not mean the SKF campaign proves a market for posthumous digital likeness already exists. What we can say is narrower: a major brand has worked with a late film icon’s family and Harriet Brown & Company to use her digital likeness in a commercial campaign, and at least one relative who manages the estate has expressed openness to future uses.

Conclusion: “What Are We Licensing?” May Become the Central Question

SKF recreated Greta Garbo for a moving-image ad 36 years after her death. According to press reports, protected photos and footage were not fed into the models that generated her appearance; the production combined text-prompt generation with a human actor’s performance, while her voice was recreated from recordings of her early films. SKF says the project was developed with Garbo’s family and Harriet Brown & Company Inc.

The significance of the project is that rights clearance in the AI era can no longer be reduced to whether an original copyrighted work was copied.

It looks like her. It sounds like her. Audiences watch because it seems to be her.

Who controls that value, and who has the authority to license it? Designing the rights and contracts around digital likeness is set to become an increasingly important part of AI-driven creative production.

This article provides general information based on public reporting and government materials and is not legal advice on any specific matter.

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Key References

• SKF – “Greta Garbo is back – starring in SKF’s initiative to overcome friction” (press release)
• SKF – “Pay Like It’s 1919 — With Your Energy Savings. Starring Greta Garbo” (campaign film)
• Reuters – “Swedish ball-bearing ad revives Greta Garbo with US, Chinese AI”
• The Guardian – Report on SKF’s AI recreation of Greta Garbo (September 30, 2026)
• Moviezine – “Här gör Greta Garbo comeback – med hjälp av AI” (in Swedish)
• Ministry of Justice, Japan – Full text of the study group report (in Japanese)