Watch: Knowledge Cutoff
The date after which a model has no built-in knowledge, because its training data stops there; recent facts are unknown unless supplied through grounding or retrieval.
Transcript
Every artificial intelligence model has a limit known as a knowledge cutoff. This is the exact date when its training data stops. Beyond this point, the model’s internal memory is frozen in time. Even if it knows today's date, it cannot reliably recall recent events, price changes, or new product releases from memory alone.
If you ask a model about something that happened after its cutoff, it is prone to hallucinate a plausible but incorrect answer. To prevent this, AI systems use retrieval-augmented generation to run live web searches and pull in the latest facts.
This is why fresh, current content is so critical for online visibility. If a brand, product, or fact postdates the cutoff, the AI can only discover it through live retrieval. To be included in the answer, your information must be crawlable and citable the very moment the question is asked.