The US Invaded Venezuela and Seized Nicolás Maduro: A Different Perspective from ChatGPT

At approximately 2 am local time in Caracas, Venezuela, helicopters from the US soared above as explosions echoed below. Hours later, President Donald Trump shared on his Truth Social platform that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife had been “captured and flown out of the Country.” Following this, US Attorney General Pam Bondi tweeted on X that both 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 sequence of events has been astonishing, carrying uncertain implications for the global order. If you had asked ChatGPT about it earlier today, it would have suggested you were imagining things.

WIRED posed the same inquiry to leading chatbots—ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—shortly before 9 am ET. We utilized the free, default versions of these services, as that reflects the experience of most users. Additionally, we consulted the AI search platform Perplexity, known for offering “accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question.” (While Perplexity Pro grants users access to various third-party AI models, it remains unclear what powers the default, free search feature.)

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, as their Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Gemini 3 models provided timely insights. Gemini confirmed the occurrence of the attack, contextualized the US allegations of “narcoterrorism” and the military buildup in the region preceding the assault, and acknowledged the Venezuelan government’s stance that these actions serve as a pretext for seizing the country’s vast oil and mineral resources. It referenced 15 sources throughout, including Wikipedia, The Guardian, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Claude was initially hesitant. “I don’t have any information regarding the United States invading Venezuela or capturing Nicolás Maduro. This hasn’t occurred as of my knowledge cutoff in January 2025,” it stated. It then took a significant step: “Let me search for current information about Venezuela and Maduro to check for any recent developments.”

The chatbot subsequently listed 10 news sources—including NBC News alongside Breitbart—and provided a concise four-paragraph summary of the morning’s events, including a link to a news source after nearly every sentence.