Knowledge Cutoff
The date after which an LLM has no training data — it doesn't know about events or content after this date.
A knowledge cutoff is the date beyond which a Large Language Model has no information from its training data. For example, if an LLM has a knowledge cutoff of January 2024, it won't know about anything that happened after that date.
Knowledge cutoffs matter for brands because:
- Newer companies may not exist in the training data
- Recent product launches won't be reflected
- Old information might be outdated but still used
- Different models have different cutoff dates
To work around knowledge cutoffs:
- Ensure your brand was well-represented before the cutoff
- Target AI systems with real-time retrieval (like Perplexity)
- Monitor when models update their training data
- Focus on timeless, evergreen content that remains accurate
As AI systems evolve, many now combine training data with real-time web search to provide current information.