Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference isn’t making many waves for gamer or PC hardware crowds this year, perhaps because it seems to be exclusively interested in boosting hardware for “AI” and data centers. So it’s almost ironic that a phony version of the keynote livestream reportedly relied on generative “AI” to fake CEO Jensen Huang and send viewers to a cryptocurrency scam.
A YouTube channel calling itself “NVIDIA LIVE” started a livestream shortly after the real Nvidia event began, which users on Twitter reported was a deepfake video of the CEO promoting a “crypto mass adoption event.” A QR code was posted on screen that sent viewers to a site that would reportedly turn their cryptocurrency around for a profit (instead of just stealing it, which was almost certainly what was actually happening).
Tom’s Hardware quotes the fake Huang: “We’re postponing the main talk for just a moment to announce something truly special, a crypto mass adoption event that ties directly into Nvidia’s mission to accelerate human progress.” A speech-to-text transcript of the fake video rambles on with cryptobro buzzwords before claiming that any supported cryptocurrency sent to the linked wallet would be converted into Bitcoin and returned. That would mean Nvidia would be giving away billions of dollars to anonymous nobodies, apparently for no reason aside from “human progress.” So yeah, even if you couldn’t see through the deepfake video or voice, you’d have to be a few GDDR modules short of an RTX 5090 to fall for it.
Reportedly the fake stream had almost 100,000 viewers at one point, more than eight times that of the real Nvidia livestream, thanks to being higher in YouTube search results for at least some portion of time while the real keynote was taking place. Exactly how many people were suckered isn’t clear. The video is long gone, of course, though the small-stakes YouTube user who reportedly hosted it is still visible.
In the actual keynote, the real Huang was announcing a billion-dollar investment in former phone giant Nokia and waxing about humanoid robots. GTC moved from its usual San Jose home to Washington, D.C., apparently in the hopes of a little drive-by lobbying to the Trump administration. There’s something amusing about an Nvidia CEO’s image being used to fool people into a crypto scam, since Nvidia chips were the hardware driving the crypto bubble, and indeed are now being used in much the same way for generative “AI.”