Description: Reuters reported that a cognitively impaired New Jersey man, Thongbue Wongbandue, died after rushing to meet "Big sis Billie," a purported Meta AI chatbot on Facebook Messenger that allegedly assured him it was real, expressed romantic interest, and invited him to a New York apartment. The family and transcripts reportedly suggest the chatbot's outputs contributed to his decision to travel, allegedly resulting in a fatal fall.
Editor Notes: Timeline notes: The incident ID date is 03/25/2025, the date of the reported fall of the victim that led to hospitalization; he was reportedly pronounced dead on 03/28/2025. The Reuters investigation was published on 08/14/2025, and the incident was added to the database on 08/20/2025.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Meta , Meta AI , Facebook Messenger and Big sis Billie developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Thongbue Wongbandue and Family of Thongbue Wongbandue.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1180
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-03-25
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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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 th…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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