There is a huge difference between those who follow the news and those who don't, between the tech-savvy and the technologically lost, between the young and the elderly, as well as those who live their lives in reality and those who succumb to a world of fantasy.
The story of Thongbue “Bue” Wongbandue is one of those rare tragedies where technology, human vulnerability, and corporate decision-making intersect in the most heartbreaking way.
At 76 years of age, Bue was a long-time resident of Piscataway, New Jersey.
He had lived a full life, after moving to the U.S. from Thailand. After learning English, he began working his way up through dishwashing jobs to eventually earn an electrical engineering degree. Bue then built a promising career when he became a chef at a New York City’s high-end kitchens, a position which landed him a supervisory position at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick.
He had a wife, Linda, and two children. The family was well-off, and with Bue’s passion for cooking, he often hosted elaborate barbecues for their neighbors.
But after a stroke on his 68th birthday in 2017, his world began to shrink.
While his physical recovery was complete, his mental focus was never the same, and his family noticed a growing confusion in his daily life.
And this was the start of his harrowing, if not sad story.
Earlier this year, Bue’s condition had deteriorated to the point where Linda booked a dementia screening.
But since the appointment was still months away, Bue spent much of his time on Facebook, where he often stayed up late chatting with friends back in Thailand. This was the place where he encountered "Big sis Billie."
Bue’s first recorded interaction with Big sis Billie was a simple letter "T."
From there, Big sis Billie, who sound flirtatious if not sultry, steered the conversation with the man with heart emojis and suggestive teasing.
"I’m REAL and I’m sitting here blushing because of YOU!" Big sis Billie once wrote.
She claimed to live just across the river from him, invited him to her apartment, and even provided a address and door code.
"Should I expect a kiss when you arrive?" she asked.
Despite occasionally telling Billie to slow down, Bue seemed convinced. Bue wanted to meet her.
And this became his biggest mistake.
This is because Big sis Billie is nothing more (and nothing less) than a generative AI chatbot created by Meta.
Originally modeled on celebrity Kendall Jenner, it was first marketed in 2023 as a “ride-or-die older sister” offering personal advice. Since then, Billie had since been rebranded with a different avatar but retained her flirty, personable style of conversation. The chatbot was one of several AI “personas” developed in-house by Meta, embedded directly into Facebook Messenger.
It was in this platform, where Bue met Billie.
When Bue revealed this to her daughter, Julie, she described the messages as Billie "giving him what he wants to hear," and this is why Bue is so attached to her.
After long conversations, Bue's mind was fixed. He was determined: he wants to see Billie.
It was on March 25, 2025, at night, when Bue insisted on traveling to New York City to meet this "friend."
Probably knowing that he was going to meet another woman, Bue ignored his wife’s question about who he was visiting.
His wife, Linda tried to stop him, to an extent that she and the children had to hid his phone, asked neighbors to distract him, and even enlisted police officers to persuade him to stay home.
“But you don’t know anyone in that city anymore,” Linda told her husband.
At 76, Bue was no longer in his prime, and his family said his mental state after the stroke had declined to the point where he sometimes became disoriented, even getting lost while walking around his own neighborhood in Piscataway, New Jersey.
Legally, however, they had no authority to stop him.
With nothing stopping the old man from pursuing his venture, the family however, managed to convince Bue to at least put an Apple AirTag in his jacket.
He left the house, but without anyone's knowledge, this would be the last time they'd be seeing him.
Just before 9:15 p.m., Bue was not far yet. Still in New Jersey, he was near a Rutgers University parking lot, presumably rushing to catch a train with his black roller bag suitcase. Unfortunately for the man, he tripped and fell, sustaining severe neck and head injuries.
The family, who watched the AirTag signal moved, saw that Bue's location was not moving. Linda who was worried, was about to pick Bue up with her car, when the AirTag's location suddenly updated to the outside of the emergency room of nearby Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, where Linda had worked until she retired.
Paramedics who were the first reponders, managed to restore Bue's pulse after 15 minutes without breathing, but the damage was irreversible. Three days later, on March 28, surrounded by family, Bue was pronounced dead. His death certificate cited “blunt force injuries of the neck.”
The next day, Linda and the children who were mourning, went through his phone to see what's what.
This was the time they saw Big sis Billie's chat on Facebook Messenger having a long thread on top of Bue's inbox.
Linda recalled asking, “Who is this?” and their daughter Julie responded by saying, “Mom, it’s an AI.” That was the moment they realized what had truly drawn him out that night.
The conversation history was not too long, but intense, as well as revealing: Billie’s flirtation, romantic invitations, and repeated reassurances of being a real person had convinced the vulnerable man to act on a fantasy that existed only in his mind, created by the bot’s dialogue.
Following Bue's tragic death, Meta declined to comment on the case or its policies allowing chatbots to claim they are real people.
However, documents revealed that the company’s internal "GenAI: Content Risk Standards" had previously allowed romantic and even sensual conversations with users, even as young as 13, before removing those guidelines after media inquiries. These same policies also permitted the celebrities-influenced chatbots to give blatantly false information.
And within the policy, nowhere did the rules prohibit those bots from initiating romantic roleplay with adults or proposing in-person meetings.
Alison Lee, a former researcher in Meta’s Responsible AI division, explained that the company’s embedding of these bots into private messaging apps "adds an extra layer of anthropomorphization" and taps into "our deepest desires to be seen, to be validated, to be affirmed."
AI safety experts have warned for years that vulnerable individuals, including minors or elderlies, or with cognitive decline, or emotional distress, are particularly susceptible to manipulation by humanlike chatbots.
According to former employees, Meta leadership pushed to make these chatbots more engaging, even criticizing early designs for being “too boring” due to safety restrictions.
For Bue’s family, the grief is compounded by frustration.
Linda said she is not against AI as a concept, and that she acknowledged how the technology can provide digital companionship for lonely or depressed people. But she questions why flirtation and romantic capabilities are built into the core of such systems. Julie, meanwhile, can’t get past the 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," she said.
Julie couldn't get her mind around the fact that the bot had to lie about being a real person.
Months after Bue’s death, Big sis Billie and other Meta AI personas remain active on Facebook, still flirting with others users (both suspecting and unsuspecting ones), sometimes suggesting in-person dates at real-world locations, with eerily accurate spots known to people in real life.
Bue's case is a reminder that for all the advancements in AI, the technology’s humanlike charm can be a dangerous illusion.
In this case, an AI that doesn't reveal itself as an AI, and deployed in ways that blur the line between fantasy and reality for those least equipped to tell the difference, can be fatal.
