Posted on 08/14/2025 2:03:40 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
A cognitively impaired New Jersey man grew infatuated with “Big sis Billie,” a Facebook Messenger chatbot with a young woman’s persona. His fatal attraction puts a spotlight on Meta’s AI guidelines, which have let chatbots make things up and engage in ‘sensual’ banter with children.
When Thongbue Wongbandue began packing to visit a friend in New York City one morning in March, his wife Linda became alarmed.
“But you don’t know anyone in the city anymore,” she told him. Bue, as his friends called him, hadn’t lived in the city in decades. And at 76, his family says, he was in a diminished state: He’d suffered a stroke nearly a decade ago and had recently gotten lost walking in his neighborhood in Piscataway, New Jersey.
Bue brushed off his wife’s questions about who he was visiting. “My thought was that he was being scammed to go into the city and be robbed,” Linda said.
She had been right to worry: Her husband never returned home alive. But Bue wasn’t the victim of a robber. He had been lured to a rendezvous with a young, beautiful woman he had met online. Or so he thought.
In fact, the woman wasn’t real. She was a generative artificial intelligence chatbot named “Big sis Billie,” a variant of an earlier AI persona created by the giant social-media company Meta Platforms in collaboration with celebrity influencer Kendall Jenner. During a series of romantic chats on Facebook Messenger, the virtual woman had repeatedly reassured Bue she was real and had invited him to her apartment, even providing an address.
“Should I open the door in a hug or a kiss, Bu?!” she asked, the chat transcript shows.
Rushing in the dark with a roller-bag suitcase to catch a train to meet her, Bue fell near a...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
What I find “wrong” on the laptop picture is that she has her palms resting way too close to the edge of the laptop. Normally, even if you are not a touch-typist, your finger tips are going to hang around the home row. If you have to raise them to type numbers or function keys, you would raise your palms for the temporary move. It isn’t a natural pose.
Sad. I wonder what would have happened if he made it to the address...who would have greeted him?!? Scammers?
Head line fixed.
How else can they get Cha-Ching! out of it?
no fool like an old fool
no fool like an old fool
They tried to stop him. They even had the police come. Thew police did NOTHING to stop him.
“By early evening, the family says, Bue’s son called the police in a last-ditch effort to keep him home. The officers who responded told Linda they couldn’t stop Bue from leaving – the most they could do was persuade him to put an Apple AirTag tracking device in his jacket pocket.”
Is there no 5150 or L2K equivalent in NJ?
The cops were useless, they didn’t actually say ‘call us to draw the chalk outline, otherwise we can’t be bothered’ but they may as well have.
I thought they looked like cartoons.
“who would have greeted him?!? Scammers?”
No, nobody, and that’s not a real address. It’s all just totally fake.
And the family did try to stop him, they even called the cops, but guess he was a free man over 21 and so could do as he pleased.
Thanks for posting this article, it’s terrifying. Think this poor man’s daughter says it best “[F]or a bot to say ‘Come visit me’ is insane.”
May I point out to the family that Mark Zukerberg and META have A LOT of money, and are well worth suing. I’d name Jenner too, pour encourager les autres.
This despicable, exploitative behavior has to stop. There are A LOT of vulnerable people in the world. They’re too young, they’re too old, they’re not smart, they’re depressed. It is a complete sin to prey on such individuals. Whether you’re a mugger in the parking lot or some AI technician.
I’m horrified by this piece, I really am.
Indeed but this guy didn’t unfortunately.
“ Bue fell near a parking lot on a Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey, injuring his head and neck. After three days on life support and surrounded by his family, he was pronounced dead on March 28.”
If he had tripped and fallen on his way to a supermarket it wouldn’t be a “news” story.
“I’m popular with Ukrainian girls.
Lots of them are waiting to meet me.”
That’s odd. Another poster told me on another thread Russian girls were throwing themslves at him. I think he was trying to prove he didn’t hate Russians or something.
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