This year, artificial intelligence stopped focusing on the future and turned to the present.
Time exclusively announced TODAY on December 11 that it had recognized the seismic impact of AI by naming the “AI Architects” elected Personality of the Year 2025. The recognition reflects how technology has seemingly become inescapable this year in nearly every aspect of American life, from its impact on education to fears of massive industry disruption.
“This is the year where we feel like the people who were designing and imagining and building artificial intelligence stopped debating how to create this technology and started rushing to deploy it, and the consequences are enormous for society,” Time editor Sam Jacobs told Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin on TODAY.
In its cover story, Time recognized the people building, designing and shaping AI, including the big names evangelizing for the technology and those behind the scenes responsible for its creation.
“It reminds me of the Gilded Age,” Jacobs said. “I think never since then has so much power been concentrated among so few individuals, and we know what happened then – incredible progress, but also incredible inequality.”
The magazine also examined the tension between those seeking to advance AI and the many ordinary people who fear the potentially widespread harmful effects of AI.
“Every industry needs it, every company uses it, and every country needs to build it,” Nvidia’s Jensen Huang told Time. “This is the most impactful technology of our time. »
There are two different Time covers this year, both illustrated and featuring prominent leaders in technology and AI. Time’s creative director, DW Pine, explained that the two artists “each created an image that speaks to the duality produced by AI: man versus machine.”
Time’s Person of the Year – which is not an honorary award, but a celebration of a person or group that has had the most influence on the events of the year, for better or worse – has already recognized some aspects of the technological revolution. In 1982, the magazine named “The computer” its Person of the Year, or more precisely, the Machine of the Year, marking the for the first time an inanimate object was recognized. This award represents how personal computers began to make their way into millions of American homes. Then in 2006, Time named “You” as Person of the Year as the World Wide Web accelerated connection around the world and content creators began to flourish.
“AI Architects” follow Personality of the Year 2024 according to TimePresident Donald Trump, who also plays an important role in the AI debate. The day after his inauguration in January, Trump and tech luminaries like Open AI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison announced the Stargate project at the White House. With this project, they pledged up to $500 billion to build AI data centers across the country. The newly formed company’s backers and technology partners include some of the biggest names in AI: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and Microsoft.
With Time’s first Person of the Year 2025 cover, digital painter Jason Seiler nods to the famous 1932 photograph “Lunch on Top of a Skyscraper,” this time depicting the following tech leaders:
- Mark Zuckerberg, Meta
- Lisa Su, advanced microdevices
- Elon Musk, xAI
- Jensen Huang, Nvidia
- Sam Altman, Open AI
- Demis Hassabis, DeepMind Technologies
- Dario Amodei, Anthropic
- Fei-Fei Li, Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute; Global Laboratories
- With his second cover, illustrator and graphic designer Peter Crowther creates a structure covered in scaffolding, with the following figures depicted inside:
- Jensen Huang, Nvidia
- Elon Musk, xAI
- Dario Amodei, Anthropic
- Lisa Su, AMD
- Mark Zuckerberg, Meta
- Demis Hassabis, DeepMind Technologies
- Fei-Fei Li, Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute; Global Laboratories
- Sam Altman, OpenAI
Time has named a Person of the Year every year since 1927, from historic world leaders to cultural figures. In 2023, Taylor Swift becomes the first personality of the year be recognized for their success in the arts.
This is not the first time that a group of people have been named Personality of the Year. In 2018, “The Guardians” deserved the distinction. He recognized journalists who have been murdered or persecuted for their reporting, including the late Jamal Khashoggi and Rappler editor-in-chief Maria Ressa. A year earlier, Time highlighted “The Silence Breakers” women who have come forward to share stories of sexual abuse and harassment as part of the #MeToo movement.
Time has also previously named prominent technology leaders as Person of the Year, including Tesla’s Elon Musk in 2021 And Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg in 2010.
Time’s 2025 Person of the Year issue now online on Time.com. Physical copies will be available on December 19 on newsstands and on The magazine store.