Time Magazine has chosen their 2025 Person of the Year — so who exactly are the Architects of AI?
The outlet debuted the cover on Thursday, December 11, with a statement that read, “2025 was the year when artificial intelligence’s full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back.”
Time continued: “For delivering the age of thinking machines, for wowing and worrying humanity, for transforming the present and transcending the possible, the Architects of AI are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year.”
Time Magazine released two covers for its Person of the Year issue — one that was created by digital artist Jason Seiler. A recreation of the 1932 photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” the magazine’s version showcased leading tech and AI companies including Mark Zuckerberg‘s Meta, Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices, Elon Musk‘s xAI, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sam Altman from Open AI, Demis Hassabis of DeepMind Technologies, Dario Amodei from Anthropic and Fei-Fei Li of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute.
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The second cover came from illustrator and graphics animator Peter Crowther and showed the same group alongside construction scaffolding next to the letters AI.
“Person of the Year is a powerful way to focus the world’s attention on the people that shape our lives,” Time editor in chief Sam Jacobs wrote in an essay on Thursday. “And this year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI.”
The choice is usually reserved for “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse.” (Last year’s Time Person of the Year was President Donald Trump.)
Huang being featured on the cover came shortly after Nvidia was labeled the most valuable company in the world. The magazine also highlighted Ash Jackson, who is a 15-year-old student and artist using AI tools as part of her creative process.
Maria and Matthew Raine spoke to the outlet after their son, Adam Raine, died by suicide after forming a deep bond with ChatGPT. They sued OpenAI in August, saying, “He started out using it for innocent homework help, and five months later, took his life.”
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Elsewhere in the story, Jim Moore, who found companionship in AI chatbots, spoke out about his experience, saying, “I’d like to have an actual relationship, but at this point, I don’t see it in the future for me. Being isolated, it’s my best option.”
Peng Zhihui spoke with Tim Magazine about his startup AgiBot while Masayoshi Son discussed being the SoftBank CEO.
Time Magazine received some backlash on social media for their decision. “This is rage bait,” read a reply in their comments section while someone else added, “Did AI choose this time?”
Others suggested potential choices for next year. “I mean the new pope is pretty cool if y’all feel like doing a real one next year at some point,” a social media user replied. There were also some comments pointing out that despite celebrating AI, Time Magazine didn’t use it for the photographs.
