it now uses bing to perform searches. so i think he is probably correct to assume that it did that. it would show up as „performing search with bing“ in the chat history.
Even before it could search online it would hallucinate checking things online. You could ask it to email you something or upload it somewhere and it'd also hallucinate thinking it did it for you. Changing its mind is always easy as long as you pretend to give it a source that refutes it.
Are you sure it didn't just "believe" what you told it, the same way LLMs can be badgered into falsehoods?