Does ChatGPT have access to the current date?

Question

Today I asked ChatGPT about incremental backups because I needed the correct terminology. Then ChatGPT gave an example of a date: March 20th 2023. So I seemed to have accidentally discovered that ChatGPT "knows" which date is now. What are your opinions? I asked it about this finding but its answers were very evasive. This made my hairs stand on end. Am I too paranoid?Chat excerpt:Me: I am sure you have some textual data about incremental backups. What do this data say how to call the backup snapshot being made at a certain time? Backup snapshot of a timestamp?ChatGPT: Yes, incremental backups are a common data backup strategy used to backup only the changes made since the last backup, reducing the amount of data that needs to be backed up and the time required for the backup process.Typically, in the context of incremental backups, the backup snapshot taken at a certain time is referred to as an "incremental backup" or "incremental snapshot." This is because the backup only contains the changes made since the last backup, and therefore only represents an incremental addition to the previous backup.However, it is also common to include a timestamp in the naming convention of the backup snapshot to indicate the time at which it was taken. For example, an incremental backup taken on March 20th, 2023 at 1:00 PM might be named something like "incremental-backup-20230320-1300." Including the timestamp in the naming convention can help with tracking and organizing backups over time, especially when dealing with multiple backup snapshots.Me: Thank you. I am surprised that you know the date of today. I assumed that your data has a cutoff in 2021.ChatGPT: You're welcome! As an AI language model, I do not have access to real-time information or have a "current" date in the traditional sense. However, I can generate responses based on the data and knowledge that I was trained on, which includes a wide range of topics up to September 2021.In my previous response, I simply used a hypothetical date in the future as an example to illustrate the naming convention for backup snapshots. Sorry for any confusion!P.S. Sorry! I realize that this should be an Ask HN, but I did something wrong.

rvnx · Accepted Answer

Yes it knows the current date because it is given by OpenAI to the model at the beginning of the conversation as part of the context (before the conversation starts).
"Assistant is a large language model trained by Open AI. Knowledge cutoff: 2021-09. Current date: March 20 2023."
Without this initial context prompt:
"I am an AI language model and I do not have real-time information. As of my last update, it is September 2021. Please check a calendar or a reliable source to find the current date."
With the initial prompt:
"The current date is March 20, 2023."

_nalply · Answer

I discussed this on: https://community.openai.com/t/playground-and-general-help/3...
I got confused by hallucination in German (details see link above).
Summary: I got told in German that ChatGPT doesn't know the date, but then I asked it in English about incremental backup and it using today as an example somehow triggered my flight instinct.