Nvidia Scandal unleashes a flood of AI-generated memes
Jensen Huang and his leather likeness have become synonymous with the tech giant Nvidia, which he co-founded. They were so intertwined that she sold the company this year sweaters for $178 with a pixel art version of Mr. Huang on the front.
Now, in the wake of Mr Huang’s resignation on Thursday following cheating scandals, including an extramarital affair with a woman the US government believes is a Chinese spy, the internet has seized on his image to unleash a flood of memes.
In many cases, they are made by AI enthusiasts who worshiped Mr. Huang.
Images of Mr. Huang have appeared in online parodies music videos, Bollywood movies, American sitcoms and kiss-cams at Coldplay concerts — many created using artificial intelligence, a technology made widely available through chips made by Nvidia.
The revelations about Mr. Huang, 63, one of the most powerful figures in the AI boom, are part of a long list of infidelity scandals that have become memes.
Last year, the married CEO of a tech start-up was captured on kiss-cam at a Coldplay concert cuddling up to his company’s married but estranged head of human resources.
Peter Dedene, a Belgian software engineer, superimposed Mr. Huang’s likeness in this viral moment. In a phone interview Thursday, he said he had been up on his phone this week scrolling through headlines about Nvidia.
Without leaving his bed, Mr Dedene, 43, used an open-source generative artificial intelligence tool to replace the Coldplay concert couple with images of Mr Huang and Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman with whom Mr Huang admitted to having an affair.
“I didn’t think much of it,” Mr. Dedene said of his meme.
When he woke up Sunday morning, he said the post had over a million views. As of Thursday afternoon, she had nearly seven million.
“I really looked up to the guy,” Mr. Dedene said of Mr. Huang, adding: “It’s kind of funny that the technology he created now allows for jokes like that.”
Social media users used AI to place Mr Huang in iconic music videos about cheating.
IN one postDonning his trademark black leather jacket, Mr. Huang takes Usher’s place in his music video for “Confessions, Pt. II.” (The lip sync is better in the original version.)
Thomas Unise, an artificial intelligence consultant in Minneapolis who shot the video, said it took him five minutes to find four images of Mr. Huang on Google and feed them into an artificial intelligence tool to replace Mr. Huang’s image with Usher’s in the video.
Mr Unise, 40, said the spread of memes using Mr Huang’s image illustrated how quickly the technology had advanced.
“A year and a half ago, Will Smith eating spaghetti looked like a bunch of smears all over the screen,” he said of the actor and musician. “Now you can look at the video and say, ‘Wow, this actually looks pretty serious.'”
IN another videoMr. Huang plays the character of Neo in a scene from the movie Matrix. As Morpheus, President Trump lectures him on the importance of maintaining strategic competition with China and not falling in love with the woman in the red dress.
Mr. Huang’s avatar turns to realize that the woman, replaced by Ms. Huang’s likeness, has become the gun-toting Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Elon Musk also appeared in the meme, which had more than six million views on X on Thursday.
On the topic of high-stakes scams in Silicon Valley, some users placed Mr. Huang in “You can see everything”, a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, who went to prison for defrauding investors.
With the help of generative artificial intelligence, users remade a montage from the documentary’s trailer, in which Ms. Huang — as Ms. Holmes — insists without batting an eye: “Of course I’m not lying to you.”
Many videos have labels that identify them as man-made.
But it’s “still surprising,” Mr. Dedene said of his video, how many people have asked, “Is it real?”
Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.