During a business conference, OpenAI's Japan business head, Yoshinobu Nagatomo, mentioned 'GPT Next' as a metaphorical reference to the next generation of large language models, suggesting that OpenAI's models are evolving exponentially over time. However, OpenAI later clarified that 'GPT Next' is merely a metaphor used to illustrate the concept of model evolution and is not an exact product name or timeline. Nagatomo depicted a transition from the 'GPT-3 Era' in 2021 to the 'GPT Next Era' in 2024 in his presentation.