{"id":147513,"date":"2025-08-15T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T10:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/147513\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T10:00:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T10:00:33","slug":"elderly-nj-man-died-trying-to-meet-flirty-ai-chatbot-in-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/147513\/","title":{"rendered":"Elderly NJ man died trying to \u2018meet\u2019 flirty AI chatbot in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 76-year-old New Jersey man died while desperately attempting to \u201cmeet\u201d a flirtatious AI chatbot<\/a> that claimed to be a real person living in New York City, according to a report published Thursday.<\/p>\n

Thongbue Wongbandue, a Piscataway resident, became entranced by a Meta artificial intelligence bot named \u201cBig sis Billie,\u201d<\/a> Reuters reports.<\/p>\n

Wongbandue had been somewhat cognitively impaired following a stroke several years ago, and his family told Reuters they tried to dissuade him from traveling to New York<\/a> to meet a mysterious \u201cfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Wongbandue attempted to make the trip on March 25 anyway, only to trip and fall in a parking lot on Rutgers University\u2019s New Brunswick campus<\/a> while trying to catch a train, according to the outlet. He died three days later from his injuries.<\/p>\n

Confounded by his determination, Wongbandue\u2019s family went through his Facebook messages and found he\u2019d been deep in flirty conversations with the chatbot.<\/p>\n

\u201cYES, I\u2019m REAL, Bu \u2014 want me to send you a selfie to prove I\u2019m the girl who\u2019s crushing on YOU?\u201d the bot wrote in one message, complete with a heart emoji at the end.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the bot even provided Wongbandue with an address, 123 Main St., New York, N.Y.<\/a>, which corresponds to addresses in both Staten Island and Queens. It asked Wongbandue if it \u201cshould expect a kiss when you arrive?\u201d<\/p>\n

Meta does not restrict its chatbots from telling users they are \u201creal\u201d people, according to documents obtained by Reuters. The company didn\u2019t comment on that decision.<\/p>\n

Wongbandue is not the only person to die while entranced by an AI chatbot. Last year, a Florida mother sued a different company, Character.AI, claiming one of its bots drove her 14-year-old son to suicide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: August 14, 2025 at 3:40 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 76-year-old New Jersey man died while desperately attempting to \u201cmeet\u201d a flirtatious AI chatbot that claimed to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":147514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,1370,108,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-147513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-national-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115032203175859904","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}