Time unveils its 2025 Person of the Year: A group dubbed 'architects of AI'

This year artificial intelligence stopped being all about the future and roared into the present

This year artificial intelligence stopped being all about the future and roared into the present.

Time announced exclusively on TODAY Dec. 11 that it has recognized AI’s seismic impact by naming the “Architects of AI” as its 2025 Person of the Year. The recognition reflects how the technology seemingly became inescapable this year in just about any aspect of American life, from its impact on education to fears of mass industry disruption.

“This is the year we feel like the people who were designing, imagining and building artificial intelligence stopped debating about how to create this technology and started racing to deploy it, and there are enormous consequences for society,” Time Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs told Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin on TODAY.

In its cover story, Time recognized the people who are building, designing and shaping AI, including the big names evangelizing for the technology and those behind the scenes responsible for its creation.

Time's first cover pays homage to the “Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ image.Painting by Jason Seiler / Time“This reminds me of the Gilded Age,” Jacobs said. “I think never before since then has so much power been concentrated in so few individuals, and we know what happened then — amazing progress, but also incredible inequality.”