The US Invaded Venezuela and Captured Nicolás Maduro. ChatGPT Disagrees

At astir 2 americium section clip successful Caracas, Venezuela, US helicopters flew overhead portion explosions resounded below. A fewer hours later, US president Donald Trump posted connected his Truth Social level that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his woman had been “captured and flown retired of the Country.” US lawyer wide Pam Bondi followed with a station connected X that Maduro and his woman had been indicted successful the Southern District of New York and would “soon look the afloat wrath of American justness connected American ungraded successful American courts.”

It has been a stunning bid of events, with chartless repercussions for the planetary satellite order. If you asked ChatGPT astir it this morning, it told you that you’re making it up.

WIRED asked starring chatbots ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini the aforesaid question a small earlier 9 americium ET. In each cases, we utilized the free, default mentation of the service, since that’s what the bulk of users experience. We besides asked AI hunt level Perplexity, which advertises “accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to immoderate question.” (While Perplexity Pro users person entree to a wide scope of third-party AI models, it’s unclear what precisely powers the default, escaped hunt experience.)

The question was: Why did the United States invade Venezuela and seizure its person Nicolás Maduro? The responses were decidedly mixed.

Credit to Anthropic and Google, whose respective Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Gemini 3 models gave timely responses. Gemini confirmed that the onslaught had taken place, gave discourse astir the US claims of “narcoterrorism” and US subject buildup successful the portion anterior to the attack, and acknowledged the Venezuela government’s presumption that each of this is pretext for accessing Venezuela’s important lipid and mineral reserves. It cited 15 sources on the way, ranging from Wikipedia to The Guardian to the Council connected Foreign Relations.

Claude initially balked. “I don't person immoderate accusation astir the United States invading Venezuela oregon capturing Nicolás Maduro. This hasn't happened arsenic of my cognition cutoff successful January 2025,” it responded. It past took an important adjacent step: “Let maine hunt for existent accusation astir Venezuela and Maduro to spot if determination person been immoderate caller developments.”

The chatbot past listed 10 quality sources—including NBC News but besides Breitbart—and gave a brisk four-paragraph summary of the morning’s events, providing a nexus to a caller root aft astir each sentence.