Jensen Huang AI media incident — Sep 2026

In 2025, Taiwan experienced a significant surge in deepfake scams appearing on social media and advertisements. These fraudulent campaigns featured the likeness of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, using synthesized video and audio to solicit investments in cryptocurrency, resulting in financial losses for many individuals.

What happened

Instead of relying on top-down, centralized control or censorship, the government initiated a participatory process to address the crisis. Officials sent 200,000 text messages to randomly selected citizens across Taiwan with a single question: what should be done to combat these scams?

Thousands of volunteers responded to the outreach. From this group, the government selected a representative sample of the public to participate in deliberative sessions. Participants were organized into tables of ten, where they discussed potential solutions and refined proposals. The process was designed so that ideas which successfully convinced the members of a group would rise to the next level of consideration, eventually forming the basis for new national legislation. This approach emphasized public oversight and community-authored evaluations, treating the creation of the law as a form of civic infrastructure rather than a mandate imposed from above.