"ChatGPT, like many chatbots, is pitched as a hyper-competent personal assistant. But among the many things that confuse it, one is particularly confounding: It cannot tell time. When I ask ChatGPT what time it is, I'm never quite sure what I'll get. Sometimes, it tells me it can't do it. "I don't have access to your device's real-time clock or your location, so I can't tell the exact local time for you," it wrote to me at 4:15PM Eastern Standard Time about a week ago."
""But I do know today's date according to my system: 2025-11-20." (Bolded by ChatGPT, I assume, to make sure I didn't overlook the things it was doing well.) Sometimes it asks me to specify a city or time zone, only to reveal it can't reliably check time that way either - "It's 12:42 PM in New York (Eastern Time, assuming your system clock is correct)," ChatGPT wrote to me at 11:08AM."
ChatGPT frequently fails to provide reliable current local time. The responses can be refusals citing lack of access to device clocks or location, requests for a city or time zone, inaccurate assumed times, or occasionally correct answers that become incorrect minutes later. Users experience inconsistent outputs across prompts and sessions, causing frustration for simple time checks. Community reports on Reddit and ChatGPT forums indicate the issue is recurrent. The underlying cause is limitations in accessing real-time system clocks and integrating accurate location data, producing unreliable timekeeping behavior in chat interactions.
Read at The Verge
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