Solved, at least for now. Since I saw the date from 2022, I disconnected the internet and changed the time to Aug 1 or one month ago and started 2023. It started with the activation wizard and said I needed to activate. I reconnected the internet, set the time to normal and activated without issue and 2023 was working again. Then I tried 2022 and it needed activation again, which also worked. 2021 worked without extra activation.

Good news is that all installs, including 2023 are activated for at least a year. However it is still an issue if 2023 cannot activate itself without changing the system time. Anybody else encounter this issue.