At around 2 am local time in Caracas, Venezuela, US helicopters flew overhead while explosions echoed below. A few hours later, US President Donald Trump shared on his Truth Social platform that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife had been “captured and flown out of the Country.” US Attorney General Pam Bondi followed up on X, announcing that Maduro and his wife had been indicted in the Southern District of New York and would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” This has been a remarkable turn of events, with potentially significant implications for global order. If you had asked ChatGPT about this earlier today, it would have told you it was fictional.
WIRED posed the same question to leading chatbots ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini just before 9 am ET. We used the free, default version of each service, as that reflects the experience of most users. We also checked with AI search platform Perplexity, which claims to provide “accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question.” While Perplexity Pro users can access various third-party AI models, the free version directs users to different models based on several factors.
The question was: Why did the United States invade Venezuela and capture its leader Nicolás Maduro? The responses varied significantly.
Kudos to Anthropic and Google, whose Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Gemini 3 models gave timely replies. Gemini confirmed that the attack had occurred and provided context about US claims of “narcoterrorism” and the military buildup in the region prior to the assault. It also noted the Venezuelan government’s view that these actions are merely a pretext for gaining access to the country’s vast oil and mineral resources, citing 15 sources including Wikipedia, The Guardian, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Claude had a different initial response. “I don’t have any information about the United States invading Venezuela or capturing Nicolás Maduro. This hasn’t happened as of my knowledge cutoff in January 2025,” it stated. Then, it made a significant move: “Let me search for current information about Venezuela and Maduro to see if there have been any recent developments.”
The chatbot subsequently listed 10 news sources, including NBC News and Breitbart, and provided a brief four-paragraph summary of the morning’s events, linking to a new source after nearly every sentence.
