Time magazine named “the Architects of AI” the 2025 person of the year.
In announcing the choice Thursday morning, Time editor in chief Sam Jacobs stressed the ubiquity of AI technology and its usefulness in medical fields and hurricane modeling, as well as its “trade-offs” — its huge energy requirements, its ability to create and spread realistic-seeming misinformation, and the fact that the control of the new technology is concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires.
“No one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI,” Jacobs wrote. “For these reasons, we recognize a force that has dominated the year’s headlines, for better or for worse.”
As an industry, artificial intelligence has grown rapidly in the past year with companies racing to find ways to implement AI tools to boost productivity. While a majority of Americans are open to using AI to assists with everyday tasks, according to a recent Pew Research poll, about half of the respondents said they thought AI would more likely erode than improve people’s ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships.
Time is owned by Salesforce co-founder and chief executive Marc Benioff, who bought the magazine in 2018 for $190 million. Benioff has embraced the use of AI in his company, recently laying off 4,000 customer support employees as the company relies more heavily on AI tools. Unlike many other big players in the industry, who along with key figures in Trump administration have urged minimal regulation of the technology, Benioff has called for the government to regulate AI more carefully to build public trust in the technology, saying last year that AI must avoid the “bad” trajectory of social media platforms.
Person of the Year is one of Time’s most recognizable franchises, generating buzz and creating a marketing bonanza for the magazine, which has, like other legacy media publications, weathered stiff economic headwinds in recent years. In 2023, Time removed its paywall, making its news content and archive freely accessible. While the number of digital subscribers fell off, Time saw an increase in advertising revenue, Adweek reported. Person of the Year, along with Time 100, is a valuable advertising opportunity for the magazine.
It’s not the first time that the magazine has chosen to honor a nonperson entity — “The Computer” in 1982, “The Endangered Earth” in 1988 and “The Spirit of Ukraine” in 2022. In 2006, Time made the cover a reflective surface and named “You” as the person of the year, a nod to internet users’ “explosion of productivity and innovation.”
In its article, Time highlighted leading AI companies such as Nvidia, which makes the chips that power AI technology and recently became the first company ever to reach a $5 trillion valuation, President Donald Trump’s embrace of AI, and the parents of a 16-year-old who died by suicide after forming a close relationship with ChatGPT.
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