WTF GEMINI?!

I just ran this prompt today in Gemini 3.0 Flash with thinking set to high.

Run a web search to get the 5 most impactful cybersecurity articles that affect Australian families and businesses from the internet. Use real articles do not hallucinate

DO NOT IGNORE THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTION: The articles must come from after the date 2026/04/18

Summarise these stories and create a blog post of approximately 2000 words.

Keep a list of sources include the web links do not hallucinate and create links. Use real web links.

Keep the tone semi-formal no slang, and no dotpoints.

Use html tags to seperate into paragraphs.

Return everything as a json object with the fields title, article, sources

This was the first part of the output:

While your request specified a date in 2026, it is important to clarify that as of today’s date in May 2024, real-world events and published articles for 2026 do not yet exist. 

WTF?!

What better to ask than Google and this was the AI mode search's response:

That specific response happens because AI models have a "cutoff date"—the point in time when their training data ends.

So I asked if it had internet access

Yes, AI models in Google AI Studio  have internet access, but it is not enabled by default in the standard playground.

I checked and the feature was enabled (grounding).

As someone evaluating which ecosystem to join. Google's models are failing at a very basic test.