One of TIME magazine’s two covers features artificial intelligence ‘godmother’ Fei-Fei Li, Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang, and X owner Elon Musk.
The year’s most influential group of people
‘Architects of AI’ have been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2025 amid the rapid advancement of technology, which was sparked by OpenAI’s introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022.
Experts say that the decision demonstrates how rapidly artificial intelligence (AI) and the companies that develop it are changing society.
“This was the year when artificial intelligence’s full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back or opting out. Whatever the question was, AI was the answer,” said Time’s editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs.
“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.”
An illustration with the letters ‘AI’ and a painting that references the 1932 photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper are featured on the magazine’s two 2025 Person of the Year covers.
Tech executives Mark Zuckerberg, Lisa Su, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Fei-Fei Li are shown in the artwork by Jason Seiler.
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Not just individuals
The title is not just given to individuals, the magazine stated.
The magazine have previously given the title to pairs of individuals, including married couples and political rivals, classes of people, and inanimate objects.
TIME previously acknowledged a technological breakthrough in 2006 when it named ‘You’ its person of the year, reflecting the growth of online communities.
The Computer was named ‘Machine of the Year’ in 1982, while The Endangered Earth was ‘Planet the Year’ in 1988.
“We have come a long way since TIME selected Charles Lindbergh as Man of the Year for 1927, in an effort to make up for the fact that editors hadn’t put the aviator on the cover following his pioneering transatlantic flight. Since then, the recognition has evolved as its focus expanded,” Jacobs stated.
“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.”
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