TIME magazine has announced its 2025 Person of the Year. The annual award goes to a group of people: the "architects of AI". The accolade is bestowed on "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse". Some of these architects appear on TIME's two cover photos. They include the CEOs of Google DeepMind, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Tesla. TIME said the technology magnates brought about "one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time." It described 2025 as the year that AI "roared into view," showing its world-changing potential.

TIME's editor-in-chief, Sam Jacobs, commented on the decision to recognize the AI architects. He wrote: "It was hard to read or watch anything without being confronted with news about the rapid advancement of a technology and the people driving it. Those stories unleashed a million debates about how disruptive AI would be for our lives. No business leader could talk about the future without invoking the impact of this technological revolution. No parent or teacher could ignore how their teenager or student was using it." He also noted the "trade-offs" associated with AI. These included vast energy requirements, job losses, the proliferation of misinformation, and cyberattacks.