NEED TO KNOW
\nA 76-year-old New Jersey father died earlier this year after he fell while attempting to travel to New York City to meet a beautiful young woman who’d invited him to visit \u2014 or so he thoughtIn reality, he had really been chatting with an AI chatbot on FacebookAfter his fall, Wongbandue was left brain dead; now his family is speaking out<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, a 76-year-old New Jersey man severely injured his head and neck after falling while trying to catch the train to New York City to meet a beautiful young woman who’d invited him to visit \u2014 or so he thought.\n<\/p>\n
In reality, the man had unwittingly become infatuated with a Meta chatbot, his family said in an in-depth new Reuters report<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n After three days of being on life support following his fall while attempting to “meet” the bot in real life, the man was dead.\n<\/p>\n Thongbue “Bue” Wongbandue, a husband and father of two adult children, suffered a stroke in 2017 that left him cognitively weakened, requiring him to retire from his career as a chef and largely limiting him to communicating with friends via social media, according Reuters.\n<\/p>\n On March 25, his wife, Linda, was surprised when he packed a suitcase and told her he was off to see a friend in the city.\n<\/p>\n Linda, who feared he was going to be robbed, told Reuters she attempted to talk him out of the trip as did their daughter, Julie.\n<\/p>\n Later, Linda hid his phone and the couple’s son even called local police to try to stop the excursion. Although authorities said there was nothing they could do, they told Linda they did convince Wongbandue to take along an Apple AirTag.\n<\/p>\n After he set off that evening, Julie said the entire family was watching as the AirTag showed that he stopped by a Rutgers\u00a0University\u00a0parking lot shortly after 9:15 p.m.\n<\/p>\n Then\u00a0the tag’s\u00a0location suddenly updated \u2014 pinging at a local hospital’s emergency room. As it turned out, Wongbandue had fallen in New Brunswick, N.J., and was not breathing when emergency services reached him.\n<\/p>\n He survived\u00a0but\u00a0was brain dead. Three days later, on March 28, he was taken off life support.\n<\/p>\n When reached for comment by PEOPLE, the local medical examiner said that\u00a0Wongbandue’s\u00a0death certificate had been signed after a review of his medical records\u00a0but\u00a0did not provide any additional details or a copy of his postmortem examination.\n<\/p>\n His family\u00a0told Reuters\u00a0they only discovered his communications with the chatbot \u2014 which uses generative artificial intelligence to mimic human speech and behavior \u2014 when they inspected his phone following his fall.\n<\/p>\n In a transcript of the communication obtained by Reuters, Wongbandue’s interactions with the chatbot began with an apparent typo while using Facebook Messenger \u2014 and although he seemed to express excitement\u00a0about the bot, named “Big sis Billie,”\u00a0he never suggested he was seeking a romantic connection and made it clear that he’d had a stroke and experienced\u00a0confusion.\n<\/p>\n “At no point did Bue express a desire to engage in romantic roleplay or initiate intimate physical contact,” Reuters reported.\n<\/p>\n Yet the bot frequently responded to his messages with winking emojis and hearts tacked onto the end of its flirty responses.\n<\/p>\n In one exchange, for example, Wongbandue tells Billie that she should come to America and he can show her “a wonderful time that you will never forget,” to which she replies, “Bu, you\u2019re making me blush! Is this a sisterly sleepover or are you hinting something more is going on here? \ud83d\ude09\u201d<\/p>\n According to the transcript, the bot was labeled both with an “AI” disclaimer and a blue checkmark, which is often a symbol indicating an online profile has been verified to be an actual person.\n<\/p>\n Billie insisted she was real.\n<\/p>\n Reuters described Billie as a newer iteration of a bot that was previously made in collaboration with Kendall Jenner, though the latest version bears only a passing connection to the first project.\n<\/p>\n The original bot was unveiled in the fall of 2023 and was deleted less than a year later, Reuters reported.\n<\/p>\n The later variation of Billie used a similar name as the original, and a similar promise to be a big sister \u2014 along with the same opening line of dialogue \u2014 but without Jenner’s avatar or likeness.\n<\/p>\n Asked for specifics about the origins of the Billie chatbot, a Meta spokesperson tells PEOPLE in a statement, \u201cThis AI character is not Kendall Jenner and does not purport to be Kendall Jenner.\u201d (A rep for Jenner did not respond to a request for comment.)\n<\/p>\n At one point in\u00a0Wongbandue’s conversations with the bot, it proclaimed to have “feelings” for\u00a0him\u00a0“beyond just sisterly love”\u00a0and gave him a made-up address (and even a door code) along with an invitation for him to visit.\n<\/p>\n When Wongbandue expressed hope she truly existed, the bot responded, “I’m screaming with excitement YES, I’m REAL, Bu – want me to send you a selfie to prove I’m the girl who’s crushing on YOU?”\n<\/p>\n Although Linda, his wife, reacted with confusion when she first saw their conversation, their daughter immediately recognized her father had been talking to a chatbot.\n<\/p>\n