Deepfake Jensen Huang Crypto Scam Outdraws Real Nvidia GTC Keynote by 5x on YouTube

Did You Fall for This Deepfake Live Stream of Nvidia's CEO?

Don't miss out on our latest stories. Add PCMag as a preferred source on Google. If you thought something was off during Nvidia's October 28 GTC keynote, you might have been watching a deepfake stream. As the real event unfolded in Washington, DC, an AI version of the same event was also live streaming and attracted almost seven times the viewers. Unfortunately, deepfake CEO Jensen Huang wasn't discussing the future of GPUs and AI data centers, but was instead promoting a cryptocurrency scam with an appropriately dangerous QR code that you should definitely never scan. CRN senior editor Dylan Martin spotted the fake stream and tweeted about it before it was taken down. Unfortunately, however, the stream was live for nearly an hour on a channel called NVIDIA Live. It was also the top result on YouTube if you searched "Nvidia GTC DC" at the time, according to TechRadar. This gave the scam a potentially huge reach, with the stream peaking at 95,000 viewers. While some of them were probably bots, that's a lot more than the 12,000 who were viewing the official stream at the same time. Martin got a transcription of deepfake Huang's presentation, and it showed the phony Huang talking up Nvidia hardware's capabilities for cryptocurrency mining. The stream then posted a QR code that would help viewers get set up with a new "crypto distribution" platform. Those who saw the stream claim it wasn't hugely convincing thanks to stilted delivery and odd pacing. For a casual viewer, however, especially someone unfamiliar with Huang's presentation style, this might be easy enough to miss. Ironically, this comes one week after YouTube launched a new Likeness Detection tool, designed to help online platforms combat deepfakes. Did Nvidia not have access to the tool? In a post-Sora 2 world, these scams are likely to proliferate. Deepfakes are much easier to create, so it's essential that we all learn how to spot them and always verify that the video is legitimate and originates from a credible source before trusting anything it says or shows us. Scammers pulled off a similar crypto scheme last year with an AI-generated Elon Musk.

More people watched a fake NVIDIA livestream than the real thing

It looks like a hundred thousand people fell for a fake NVIDIA livestream featuring an AI-generated version of CEO Jensen Huang, . Perhaps the scariest part is that the fake stream ran at the same time as an actual NVIDIA event and dwarfed the live viewership numbers. The actual keynote speech of NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) garnered around 20,000 live views, while the fake stream maxed out at 100,000 live views. Even weirder? The fake Huang was talking about some crazy stuff mostly involving bogus crypto investments. The deepfake spoke of "a crypto mass adoption event that ties directly into NVIDIA's mission to accelerate human progress." The avatar urged viewers to scan a QR code to, uh, send in cryptocurrencies. It's unclear if any of the 100,000 viewers fell for this obvious scam that asked people to send the money to "accelerate human progress." The fake video has since been deleted. I haven't been able to check it out to see just how real it looked and, thereby, how it was able to lure in 100,000 viewers. Before we all start screaming into the night about how reality doesn't matter anymore, there are a few things worth considering. First of all, we don't know anything about the 100,000 accounts that were watching the fake stream. We don't know where they're from or even if the accounts were tied to real people. It's also worth noting that the real stream has since garnered 200,000 views, despite just having 20,000 live viewers. We don't know what kind of promotional tools the fakers used to draw in people or how long people stayed once they clicked. Finally, there's Huang himself. The man has hosted four GTC conferences just this year, and dozens upon dozens in previous years. There is an absolute abundance of footage of him standing on a stage and talking about stuff. That's a whole lot of video for bad actors to use as AI training data. Also, the real stream wasn't exactly a barn burner. The most notable news we got was the announcement of a to promote autonomous driving. This wasn't an event to hype up new graphics cards or anything like that. The company revealed some government contracts, if that's your bag. So we might not be cooked just yet, but the water is certainly getting hotter. Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman donated his likeness to the . Users quickly got to work making Altman do all kinds of unsavory things, and eating a grilled Pikachu.

A deepfake Jensen Huang outperformed Nvidia's real GTC keynote on YouTube - with five times the viewers

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Facepalm: They say crime doesn't pay, but when a fake Nvidia GTC keynote on YouTube featuring a deepfaked Jensen Huang promoting a crypto scam gets five times more viewers than the real thing, you have to wonder if that's true. CRN senior editor Dylan Martin highlighted the fake GTC keynote on X yesterday. While YouTube says it does all it can to fight scams, the fake stream, hosted on a channel called NVIDIA Live, was the top result when typing "Nvidia gtc dc" into the platform's search bar. The perpetrators behind the stream would likely have been pleased to see its view count hit 95,000 viewers at one point (with a percentage them being of bots, probably), while the real GTC stream had just 12,000 viewers. The illicit stream has now been removed from YouTube, but Martin posted an Otter.ai transcription of what deepfaked Huang talked about. The AI avatar said that before diving into the keynote, there was a "surprise that's too exciting to wait": a crypto mass adoption event that "ties directly into Nvidia's mission to accelerate human progress." There was then talk of Nvidia hardware crunching the complex math behind crypto mining, optimizing Ethereum smart contracts, driving Solana transactions, etc. Fake Huang then asked viewers to scan a QR code on the screen so they could send cryptocurrencies to a crypto distribution scheme that Nvidia was supposedly launching. There were around 40 minutes between Martin posting his first message highlighting the stream and the one confirming it had been taken down. Deepfaking public figures using generative AI has become incredibly simply, with many results scarily convincing. Martin notes that fake Huang sounded stilted, but it's easy to imagine that at least a few viewers were taken in by claims of Nvidia launching a crypto distribution platform. This isn't the first time someone has deepfaked a well-known figure to promote a crypto scam in a live YouTube broadcast. In 2025, an AI-generated version of Elon Musk's voice instructed viewers to deposit their Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin at a certain website to automatically receive double the amount they deposited straight back. Fake Musk also appeared in several of the Linus Tech Tips channels when the company was hacked in 2023.

A deepfake video of Nvidia's CEO sent thousands of viewers to a crypto scam

Reportedly, the fake video had almost 100,000 live YouTube viewers at one point -- far more than the real keynote stream hosted by Nvidia. 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."

A fake livestream featuring an AI-generated, crypto-promoting Jensen Huang was broadcast at the same time as the Nvidia GTC keynote, gaining 5x more live views than the real thing

The AI-generated video appeared to show Jensen Huang promoting a "crypto mass adoption event". Nvidia streamed the keynote speech of its latest GPU Technology Conference yesterday -- though unfortunately thousands of folks seem to have fallen for a deepfake Jensen Huang extolling the virtues of cryptocurrency instead. Just when you thought the dodgy reuploaders and react channels were bad enough, it turns out you've now got to worry about fully counterfeit event streams too. For those that missed it, the official Nvidia GTC, originally streamed live from Washington, D.C. on October 28, can be viewed here. Though it's sitting pretty at nearly 200,000 views now, that wasn't the case during the stream; while about 20,000 tuned in for the official event as it went live, nearly 100,000 viewers were said to be watching the deepfake feed broadcast (hosted by a channel calling itself Nvidia Live) at the same time (via Tomshardware). The counterfeit stream has since been removed, but CRN editor Dylan Martin posted to X about the debacle as it happened, observing that at its peak, the official upload had only about a fifth of the viewership of the deepfake feed. The deepfaked Huang claimed to postpone the main event in favour of promoting "a crypto mass adoption event that ties directly into Nvidia's mission to accelerate human progress." The AI-generated Huang also encouraged viewers to scan an on-screen QR code, and send in supported cryptocurrencies. It's not yet clear how many (if any) viewers may have scanned this QR code or lost money while believing this fake stream to be legitimate. This turn of events is in many ways unsurprising. Just earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman volunteered his own likeness into the maw of AI video generator Sora 2, with perhaps predictable results. As for Huang, this is the fourth GTC keynote he's hosted this year alone, likely adding to the wealth of easily accessible video footage for bad actors to use as AI training data. Please excuse me while I go to pick out a cute, brown paper bag to wear on my head for forever more. As Nvidia already secured a $4 trillion valuation earlier this year, (and is now fast approaching the $5 trillion mark), in no small part thanks to the many moves it's made around AI, there's an irony that isn't lost on me. It's also worth noting that, even as the money going into AI-based investments threatens to outstrip the money coming out, Huang recently downplayed concerns about a bubble. Nvidia NIM is already being leveraged in deepfake image detection models like Hive's, but I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia itself made a move similar to Meta, and released more deepfake detection tools in the near future. Failing that, it seems we all need to keep our eyes peeled, as our online reality threatens to come apart at the seams.