Stinks to me like they are pulling a little marketing campaign to lure in new users and the media is happy to oblige to use the same language/phrasing.
For reference, they disabled browsing because you could bypass paywalls with it.
It's not strictly January 2022, because I've seen people get answers about the 2022 Superbowl (February 2022) and the Will Smith slap at the Oscars (March 2022) as well.
Though I've been unable to replicate the Oscars one myself.
I can't barely guess why it clearly has that information but insists on the cut-off. Best guess: It's told "January 2022 cut-off" is the correct answer for things it 'knows' are past that date, but because of temperature setting it sometimes answers otherwise. That would suggest a hard-ish cut-off in January 2022; but a hard cut off in (at least) April 2022 (because of the Oscars stuff).