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 st

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."