Time magazine has unveiled its 2025 Person of the Year: the “Architects of AI.”
The magazine cites this year as when the potential of artificial intelligence “roared into view,” with no turning back.
“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 said in a social media post.
The magazine selected the “individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI” rather than the technology itself.
One of the cover images is inspired by the iconic 1930s photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” and depicts eight tech leaders sitting on the beam: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the CEO of Google’s DeepMind division Demis Hassabis, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, who launched her own startup World Labs last year.
Another cover image features scaffolding surrounding the giant letters “AI,” made to resemble computer components.
Time previously named Tesla’s Musk as Person of the Year in 2021 and Zuckerberg received his laurels in 2010.
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“We’ve named not just individuals but also groups, more women than our founders could have imagined (though still not enough), and, on rare occasions, a concept: the endangered Earth, in 1988, or the personal computer, in 1982,” wrote Sam Jacobs, Time’s editor-in-chief.
“The drama surrounding the selection of the PC over Apple’s Steve Jobs later became the stuff of books and a movie,” he continued. “This selection is the third in a series that has captured the key moments in the technological revolution of the past half-century.”
Jacobs said the “rise of the personal computer in the 1980s transformed the economy” and the “emergence of digital communities was captured famously — and infamously — by TIME naming ‘You’ as Person of the Year in 2006, with a mirrored cover.”
“Hindsight shows how prescient those picks were. Now, the social internet made possible by personal digital devices is giving way to a new era, the age of artificial intelligence,” he added.
Jacobs said that Person of the Year is “a powerful way to focus the world’s attention on the people that shape our lives.”
“And this year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI. Humanity will determine AI’s path forward, and each of us can play a role in determining AI’s structure and future,” he wrote. “Our work has trained it and sustained it, and now we find ourselves moving through a world increasingly defined by it.”
The “Architects of AI” follow the magazine’s 2024 Person of the Year, U.S. President Donald Trump.
Jacobs said Trump was someone who, “for better or for worse, had the most influence on the news in 2024.”
“This is someone who made an historic comeback, who reshaped the American presidency and who’s reordering American politics,” Jacobs said. “It’s hard to argue with the fact that the person who’s moving into the Oval Office is the most influential person in news.”
He added that “there’s always a hot debate” at the magazine over the honour, “although I have to admit that this year was an easier decision than years past.”
Trump was also Time’s Person of the Year in 2016, when he was first elected to the White House.
—With files from The Associated Press
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