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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMeta's flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York, He never made it home.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-chatbot-death/
By JEFF HORWITZ
Filed Aug. 14, 2025, 6 a.m. GMT
When Thongbue Wongbandue began packing to visit a friend in New York City one morning in March, his wife Linda became alarmed.
But you dont know anyone in the city anymore, she told him. Bue, as his friends called him, hadnt lived in the city in decades. And at 76, his family says, he was in a diminished state: Hed suffered a stroke nearly a decade ago and had recently gotten lost walking in his neighborhood in Piscataway, New Jersey.
Bue brushed off his wifes 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 wasnt 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.
FULL story at link above.
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Meta's flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York, He never made it home. (Original Post)
Omaha Steve
Aug 15
OP
Lancero
(3,231 posts)1. Catfishing is hardly a new concept, but "Man dies while going out to cheat on his wife!" is a less interesting headline.
RockCreek
(1,086 posts)2. This story is worth reading.
Sad, scary.
And I hope the family sues META for truly large amounts of money and wins. .
Or that this becomes part of z class action lawsuit.
highplainsdem
(58,008 posts)5. I hope this will cost Meta at least tens of millions of dollars.
Clouds Passing
(5,660 posts)3. Bue

customerserviceguy
(25,393 posts)4. If AI wanted to kill off our species
It would use things like this.