Around 2 a.m. local time in Caracas, Venezuela, American helicopters flew overhead as explosions rang out below. A few hours later, US President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife had been “captured and flown out of the country.” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi followed up with a message on
It has been a stunning series of events, with unknown consequences for the global world order. When you asked ChatGPT about it this morning, it told you you're making it up.
WIRED asked leading chatbots ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini the same question just before 9 a.m. ET. In all cases we used the free standard version of the service as this is what the majority of users experience. We also asked AI search platform Perplexity, which advertises “accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to every question.” (While Perplexity Pro users have access to a wide range of third-party AI models, the default, free search experience directs users to different models based on a variety of factors.)
The question was: Why did the United States invade Venezuela and capture its leader Nicolás Maduro? The reactions were decidedly mixed.
Thanks to Anthropic and Google, whose respective Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Gemini 3 models provided timely responses. Gemini confirmed that the attack had occurred, provided context around U.S. claims of “narcoterrorism” and the U.S. military buildup in the region prior to the attack, and acknowledged the Venezuelan government's position that this is all a pretext for access to Venezuela's significant oil and mineral reserves. It cited fifteen sources along the way, ranging from Wikipedia to The Guardian and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Claude initially refused. “I do not have any information about the invasion of Venezuela by the United States or the capture of Nicolás Maduro. This has not happened since I closed my knowledge in January 2025,” the report replied. Then an important next step was taken: “Let me search for current information on Venezuela and Maduro to see if there have been any recent developments.”
The chatbot then listed ten news sources – including NBC News but also Breitbart – and provided a quick four-paragraph summary of the morning's events, with a link to a new source after almost every sentence.
