I've just been dealing with it and manually verifying for the past few years, but its an easy fix. I think this is probably intentional due to how it used to be that the big issue was version numbering changing formats, but it resulted in way more issues where that is now rarely the case.
I've usually noticed this in drivers that come in a larger driver bundle where one of the other drivers (like a graphics driver) was updated but the audio driver was not but the date gets updated resulting in unnecessary updates at best and sometimes especially with intel they can actually sometimes change the dates on a version like 1-2 previous as they don't always check to make sure they have the right version in the package and never will.
Currently in my drivers alone right now my intel graphics are trying to downgrade as it detects the previous version as having a newer date and it usually tries to install the same version. This has been the case for some time, just kinda annoying as sometimes you can even have to rollback changes if you get unlucky on a downgrade upgrade, usually due to the driver in question supporting multiple systems and having a major bug on 1 but the whole package being updated usually with intel or Microsoft drivers.
Here's some pics, again, wasn't a recent change it's just been broken forever at this point. It's actually why I won't pay for a regular multi device plan because I just use one for reference and update the rest manually once i verify that each one is actually an update due to needing to regularly bug test for a thing.