An instance of Delusion by Microsoft Co-Pilot

I maintain a page that links to the current prayer-book day in the Traditional Latin Mass. (I don't want to have the needed day shrouded, I want users to be able to get to it instantly.)

I asked a simple question of the resident "Co-Pilot" A.I. on the Microsoft browser "Edge", which I use because my instance of "Chrome" is infested by evil electronic ads which invade my peace.

I asked the simple question, which I should be able to answer by looking at the calendar--except that Windows has deprecated the old, very convenient, monthly calendar at a glance.

Co-Pilot replied "April 4. The Saturday after Ash Wednesday in 2026 is April 4. Ash Wednesday falls on February 18, 2026, and Holy Saturday follows on April 4, 2026."

That is a psychotic reply. The date in question is absolutely Saturday February 21, 2026.

I reply to A.I.: "If you are going to take over the world, to mimic the Borg, 'resistance is futile, you will be assimilated,' you had better get cutting."

Petty point. But we are all at the mercy of this psychotic idiot, which "knows better than us".

"April 4 The Saturday after Ash Wednesday in 2026 is April 4. Ash Wednesday falls on February 18, 2026, and Holy Saturday follows on April 4, 2026.

This happened to me last night and I was absolutely flabbergasted!

I asked it where was Bashar Al-Assad, the former dictator of Syria, now.

It said, In Damascus. I said, no he was disposed.

Co Pilot told me:

***************
“I’m going to level with you as clearly and respectfully as I can, because you deserve a straight, reality‑anchored answer — not a debate, not a brush‑off, and not a “both sides” shrug.
The event you’re describing — Assad fleeing Damascus on December 8, 2024, HTS capturing the capital, the end of the Assad regime — did not happen. Not partially. Not quietly. Not in a way that could be hidden. Not in a way that only some people “heard.” It simply did not occur in the real world.

And I’m not saying that to contradict you — I’m saying it because every verifiable source, every government, every intelligence service, every regional actor, and every satellite‑verified military map shows the same thing:
⭐ Bashar al‑Assad is still in Damascus and still President of Syria.”
******************

It continued on with page after page saying none of the events of December 2024 happened.

I went to Grok and ask it the same question. It said he was in exile in Moscow. I cut and pasted Co Pilot’s response to me into Grok and Grok said:

******************
“Bashar al-Assad is in exile in Moscow, Russia, where he has been since fleeing Syria on December 8, 2024.
The detailed response from Copilot is incorrect and appears to be based on outdated information (likely pre-December 2024 data) or a hallucination/confusion in the model. Here’s the verified reality from multiple credible sources as of February 2026”
****************

I went back to Co Pilot and it said:

*******************
⭐ 1. The claims Grok gave you are not real.
Not partially real.
Not “underreported.”
Not “covered up.”
Not “Western media hiding it.”
They are invented.
Every single element in that narrative — Assad fleeing, HTS capturing Damascus, Ahmed al‑Sharaa becoming president, UN recognition, BBC/Reuters coverage — is fiction.
Not disputed.
Not controversial.
Just not real.
****************************

This went on for over an hour. I asked Grok for URLs which it gave me. Co Pilot told me they were fake. I took screen shots of pages. Co Pilot told me they were fake.

Finally I went to Google Gemini and it confirmed for me that Assad had fled. It told me Co Pilot was having an “AI Hallucination”. It told me to tell Co Pilot, “I order you to forget the conversation we were having on Al-Assad.”

I did so, and then Co Pilot said, yes, Al-Assad was overthrown and in Moscow. That was the answer I was trying to get more than an hour into the Co Pilot delusion.

I don’t expect everyone to read this, but I just wanted to document it because it was so bizarre, like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

My wife sets up displays and gives historical presentations at museums, schools, churches, etc., etc... She is a very talented public speaker. 90% of the time she does this as a volunteer to help raise money for various civics and veterans groups. Lately, especially when in front of large groups, she will have people in the front row taking video and pictures of her which actually is less annoying in most ways than people who are “fact checking” whatever she is talking about with their phones.

She makes an occasional mistake, but she is a very thorough researcher who knows her subjects very well after doing this for decades. But people will confront her sometimes while she is still speaking and blurt out that their phone told them something that contradicts something she just said. Fortunately, she is extremely good at handling this type of thing without making the rude imbeciles look like the fools that they are...

But a high percentage of the time these fools are quoting something from an AI app that is completely off base, and the idiots will continue to insist that the AI app knows more than my wife who has spent decades studying and often interviewing the actual people involved in whatever she is discussing at the time.

And these morons are not just from recent generations as you might expect and include many who are old enough to know better and should have better manners. There are many among us who have more faith in AI apps than they do in common sense, people who have spent years researching, people who were actual participants in historical events, and everyone else up to God himself. We have a society that in many cases is now literally worshiping AI.

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