Love-struck woman learns ‘pilot’ boyfriend was AI creation

66-year-old travels from Lampang to Chiang Mai airport for rendezvous that never happened

PUBLISHED : 17 Sep 2026 at 12:58

A 66-year-old woman from Lampang travelled to Chiang Mai in search of what she believed was true love with a pilot she had met online, only to discover he was an AI-generated character, police said on Thursday.

The incident came to light at about 8pm on Wednesday at Chiang Mai International Airport in Muang district, when airport security officers found the elderly woman at the terminal.

The woman, later identified as Ipo, 66, lives in Wang Nua district of Lampang and is a member of the Muser (Lahu) ethnic minority.

She told officers she had travelled to Chiang Mai to meet a man named Chai, whom she believed was a pilot based at the airport, said Pol Lt Col Nitiphat Bulmark, an inspector with Tourist Police Division 2.

When she showed them a picture of the man she was looking for, officers concluded that the image appeared to have been generated by AI and had been posted on Facebook.

Initial questioning found that Ms Ipo had travelled by bus from Wang Nua district to the Arcade bus terminal in Chiang Mai before taking a tuk-tuk to the airport to look for “Chai”.

Police found that she had become emotionally attached to a character after viewing social media content on Facebook. Communication with the woman was difficult because she mainly spoke her hill-tribe language and appeared confused.

Tourist police and rescue workers later managed to contact her son and inform him of the situation. Her family said they had not known she had left the area.

Officers provided her with food, drinking water and a blanket, while airport security staff arranged a safe temporary resting area for her inside the terminal.

On Thursday morning, tourist police accompanied Ms Ipo to the bus terminal, where they helped her to buy a ticket back to Wang Nua, where her son was waiting to take her home.

A tourist policewoman speaks to Ms Ipo, a 66-year-old tribal woman, who had travelled from Lampang to Chiang Mai airport to meet her “pilot boyfriend”, only to be disappointed. (Photo: Chiang Mai Tourist Police)