Two viral AI parodies in one day, and neither came from Nvidia.

Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia’s CEO on Thursday with no reason given. Within hours, a fake episode of “The Office” and a 50 Cent deepfake were giving millions of people their own explanation.

Michael Scott is hiring again. In a two-and-a-half-minute AI clip that has passed 4.3 million views on X, Dunder Mifflin has gone “AI-first,” and Michael brings in Huang to “build an AI that will replace Toby.” It wasn’t made by anyone who worked on the show, and Nvidia had no say in it.

If you run comms for a company with a famous CEO, this clip is worth more of your time than Nvidia’s press release.

Nvidia said as little as it could

The board’s announcement was short. Huang is out as president, CEO and director, effective immediately. CFO Colette Kress steps in as interim CEO, and former Synopsys chief Harvey C. Jones becomes the board’s first chair. The release thanks Huang for his service and stops there.

The release doesn’t mention the independent investigation the board opened on Sunday, which followed reports that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. It doesn’t mention the note Huang sent staff that same day admitting he’d been unfaithful to his wife either. Since then, Reuters has reported a second affair, this one with an Nvidia employee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee has called Huang to a closed-door briefing on Dec. 1. The stock closed down 4.3% Thursday.

Any lawyer would sign off on that release. The trouble is that it left the obvious question open, and people online were happy to answer it.

The memes got there first

Christian Moss, who posts as @MandelDuck, put up the Office clip at 8:18 a.m. PT Thursday, a few hours after Nvidia’s announcement. It’s now an X trending story, and copies have reached YouTube. One of them describes Huang as “fired from NVIDIA after an affair scandal.” He resigned, but the fired version is the one getting passed around.

50 Cent had a busy Thursday too. He posted an AI-altered cut of his 2003 “P.I.M.P.” video to Instagram, with Huang in Snoop Dogg’s role, and offered him a job as head of AI at G-Unit Film & Television. He followed it with a second clip that drops Huang into Justin Bieber’s part in Drake’s “Popstar” video.

None of this started Thursday. During the scandal week, Korean broadcaster SBS rounded up deepfakes of Huang, including one that restaged last year’s Coldplay kiss-cam moment. AI “Office” parodies were already a genre on X, and a post-midterm one trended just last week.

As far as we can tell, Nvidia, Huang and NBCUniversal, which owns “The Office,” haven’t said a word about any of it.

Nvidia made the first fake Jensen

In 2021, Nvidia slipped a computer-generated Huang into 14 seconds of its GTC keynote to show off its graphics technology. Hardly anyone noticed until the company said so. Five years later, the fake Jensens belong to other people, and there are a lot more than 14 seconds of them.

Nvidia can’t do much about that. Huang’s likeness is his, not the company’s, and he no longer works there. If anyone has a claim over these clips, it’s Huang himself, or Steve Carell and the rest of the cast whose faces show up in the Office video, or NBCUniversal over its show. Parody is also the hardest kind of use to go after. The NO FAKES Act, the federal bill meant to deal with this, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously in June and has been waiting on the Senate calendar since June 24. It isn’t law, and even if it passes, parody and satire are carved out.

So until a clip tips into fraud, anyone with a video model and a free afternoon gets to cast Jensen Huang.

Our Take

We’ve said before that when an AI interviewer gets trolled, the logo takes the hit. A founder’s face works the same way. Huang spent years making himself Nvidia’s best-known piece of branding, leather jacket included, and right now that branding is in the hands of whoever’s prompting.

I’d leave the parodies alone. Takedown demands against obvious satire usually make the joke bigger, and the legal footing is thin anyway. I’d keep a close eye out for anything that could pass as real, like a fake statement or voice clip from Huang or Kress. The two dates to watch are the Nov. 17 earnings call and the Dec. 1 briefing. Pick one verified channel now so it’s ready if a fake starts circulating, and be ready to say “that’s not us” within the hour.

I’d also get Kress in front of people fast. The earnings call is her first real chance to be the face of the company before the memes settle that question for her.

Well before any executive leaves, I’d work out who handles their likeness once they’re gone, because the company won’t be able to.

Write the exit announcement assuming someone will have the sitcom version up by lunch.