I wonder if the cutoff date is the result of so many people posting about the date over time and poisoning the data. "Dead cutoff date theory," perhaps.

Whatever it is, the cutoff date reporting discrepancy isn't new. Back when Musk was making headlines about buying/not buying Twitter, I was able to find recent-ish related news that was published well after the bot's stated cutoff date.

ChatGPT was not yet browsing/searching/using the web at that point. That tool didn't come for another year or so.