Greta Garbo Would Hate the AI Version of Her Being Used to Sell Ball Bearings

Greta Garbo was a one in a billion talent. The Swedish actress was brought to Hollywood to be the impeccable, enigmatic leading lady of immense beauty, confidence, and tragedy. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses of all time, she was renowned for her subtle and naturalistic approach to performance at a time when bigger was better. It’s hard to fully describe what made her so special, but truly, she had “IT.” In 1941, she made her final film and stepped away from Hollywood, avoiding the limelight for decades and living a very private life. She came to Hollywood on her own terms and left it in charge. She would be horrified to see this AI generated monstrosity standing in for her in 2026.

Garbo’s likeness has been animated via an AI company for an ad for, and I’m not kidding, ball-bearings. The greatest actress of her era, the embodiment of glamour, has been dug up by her relatives for ball-bearings. Craig Reisfield, one of three relatives who manage her legacy, told The Guardian, “It was startling what they could do and very impactful. And it was touching, from my perspective having known her.” Was she a big ball-bearings fan, dude?! When Garbo was a teen, she did an ad for SKF, so I suppose someone thought she’d be up for this post-mortem reunion.

This act of digital necromancy, surprisingly, didn’t involve using moving or still images of Garbo because that material is under copyright. Usually, these companies don’t care. Instead, they used text prompts to create her likeness and had her voice blended in from an early movie. It still sucks.

Asked whether the real Garbo would have wanted to continue performing as an AI-enabled actor, Reisfield said: “She was at the forefront of cinema in the silent film era. She made the transition to ‘talkies’ and dominated box office receipts. So to imagine her as an AI-enabled actor given her track record and ability to captivate and connect with audiences of both men and women isn’t inconceivable.” Google, what is “grasping at straws” in Swedish?

As with all of these celebrity estates being plundered for cash by distant relatives and venture capitalists, they have to spin a great lie about how the deceased individual would have loved having their work and appearance fed into the plagiarism machine to be used to sell crap they didn’t care about. See, it’s not about greed or exploitation. It’s about art! Greta Garbo just loved collaborating with artistic vandals who wanted to force her body into images and projects she despised! Read any biography of her for proof of that, right?

Truly, I hate this. I do not care how “realistic” it looks or if it captures Garbo’s personality — it doesn’t, for the record, because Garbo would never be so bland or stilted — because the very act of treating her like this when she isn’t here to defend herself is ghoulish. Her money-grabbing estate should at least have the self-awareness to pretend to be ashamed. You took one of the most famously private and autonomous women from Hollywood’s golden age and you stole her image to sell ball-bearings?! This feels like a joke from The Critic or The Studio.

AI is not inevitable and neither is nonsense like this. She wanted to be left alone for a reason.