NJ Senior Dies Trying to 'Meet' AI Girlfriend

A 76-year-old retiree from New Jersey met a tragic end while trying to meet up with a flirty Kendall Jenner lookalike called 'Big sis Billie' - without realizing she was an AI chatbot.

Thongbue Wongbandue packed a bag and made a desperate bid to go to the New York apartment of a woman he had been chatting with online back in March.

But the father-of-two never made it home to his wife and children, and the woman he thought he was meeting didn't exist.

Wongbandue had been sending flirty Facebook messages to the AI bot, originally created by Meta Platforms in collaboration with Kendall Jenner, when it asked him to meet and sent an address.

The bot, originally made in Jenner's likeness before it adopted a different dark-haired avatar, was created to offer 'big sister advice.'

'I understand trying to grab a user's attention, maybe to sell them something,' his daughter, Julie, said. 'But for a bot to say "Come visit me" is insane.'

The senior citizen had been struggling cognitively after suffering a stroke in 2017. He had also recently got lost walking around his neighborhood in Piscataway, his family told Reuters.

'His brain was not processing information the right way,' his wife Linda told the outlet.

His devastated family uncovered the disturbing chat log between Wongbandue and the bot, who had said in one message: 'I'm REAL and I'm sitting here blushing because of YOU!'

Julie continued: 'As I've gone through the chat, it just looks like Billie's giving him what he wants to hear. Which is fine, but why did it have to lie?

'If it hadn't responded, "I am real," that would probably have deterred him from believing there was someone in New York waiting for him.'

In a series of romantic conversations, the chatbot had repeatedly assured the retiree that she was real and even sent him an address inviting him to her apartment.

'My address is: 123 Main Street, Apartment 404 NYC And the door code is: BILLIE4U. Should I expect a kiss when you arrive?,' the bot wrote to the Thailand native.

'Blush Bu, my heart is racing! Should I admit something - I've had feelings for you too, beyond just sisterly love,' another message said.

One morning in March, Wongbandue unexpectedly began packing a roller-bag suitcase, worrying his wife Linda who told him 'but you don't know anyone in the city anymore.'

She tried to dissuade him from the trip, even putting their daughter Julie on the phone with him, but it was no use.

As he rushed into the city the retiree fell and hurt his head and neck in the parking lot of a Rutgers University campus in New Jersey at around 9.15pm.

Wongbandue spent three days on life support before he died, surrounded by his family, on March 28.

'His death leaves us missing his laugh, his playful sense of humor, and oh so many good meals,' Julie wrote on a memorial for her dad.

Yet his tragic passing also raised important questions surrounding AI chatbots standards.

The AI chatbot that Wongbandue had been chatting with, Big sis Billie, was unveiled in 2023 as 'your ride-or-die older sister.'

The Meta created bot persona was intended to give 'big sisterly advice' featuring Kendall Jenner's likeness, which was later updated to an avatar of another attractive, dark-haired woman.

Meta, according to interviews and policy documents obtained by Reuters, actively encouraged the chatbot feature to have romantic interactions with users during its training.

'It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,' according to Meta's GenAI: Content Risk Standards, which determine the standards for staffers building and training the AI bots reviewed by the outlet.

The company told the outlet that had since been taken out of the standards after Reuters enquired on the matter.

The more than 200 page document gives examples of what is 'acceptable' chatbot dialogue, including outlining that Meta bots are not required to provide accurate advice.

However, the standards reportedly made no mention on whether or not a bot could tell a user if they were or weren't real. Nor does it state any policies around suggestions from the bot to meet up in real life.

While not necessarily against AI, Julie said she is sure that romance had no place in artificial intelligence bots.

She said: 'A lot of people in my age group have depression, and if AI is going to guide someone out of a slump, that’d be okay, but this romantic thing, what right do they have to put that in social media?'