I thought about that after posting. I once had a week where I fiddled with the printer constantly after changing the toner, trying to get it to stop reporting it as empty. So who knows, maybe there's something to it. However, looking at the toner cartridge, I don't really see how they could do this.

It's also possible they have a unified firmware and this 'feature' doesn't impact my model.

The printer is probably programmable enough to implement any behaviour with a handful of code in the firmware; the maker doesn't need a specific "chip in the printers", just the capability to read data from ink cartridges (some wires and ports) and the trivial capability to not print or degrade quality.