Another easy test is to ask a question, note the answer, then clear the chat and repeat the same question. Do this over and over again and you'll see varying responses because the majority of it is just made up instead of pooled information from somewhere.
A lot of those LLM models are just good for roleplaying purposes. But even the large commercial models that actually were trained on a lot of potentially valuable information have this issue, which is why you should never blindly trust LLM answers.
I find this situation rather entertaining. It shows yet again how important it is to educate people on the basics of how LLM work, including how they are being executed - I’m guessing with just a tiny bit more knowledge it’d also have been obvious nonsense to you.
[update] A better headline would have been: AI hallucinates stating it phones home when corrected, user did not wireshark it to confirm.
TIL that I’m not better than all the old people on Facebook believing what the scammers tell them. Let that be a lesson to you, don’t use a LLM for fact checking.
[/update]
Fair play on OP. They’ve updated the story and saved me writing a tirade on how LLMs are not trustworthy.