Time’s Person of the Year cover feels like a desecration of history

Time Magazine has named its Person of the Year, choosing to honour the 'Architects of AI' with a cover design recreating the iconic 'Lunch atop a Skyscraper' photograph. While the annual announcement is always contentious, this year's choice has perhaps been Time's most controversial yet, sparking outrage among AI critics.

While some of the best magazine covers aren't afraid to be provocative, it's clear that Time Magazine's new cover is engineered to spark strong feelings from both sides of the AI conversation. Whether you see it as a vision of the future or a desecration of the past, Time's new cover is everything that AI represents – bold, unflinching yet derivative.

"This is the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways," Time's announcement claims, highlighting its featured 'Architects of AI'. Among the ranks are NVIDIA CEO Huang Renxun, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman, each representing how AI technology has "emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons."

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At the centre of 2025's controversial Person of the Year is a provocative cover created by digital painter Jason Seiler. A 'homage to 'Lunch atop a Skyscraper', Seiler replaces each of the hardworking ironworkers with AI moguls.

While the photograph (which is named as one of Time's 100 most influential photographs of all time) has been pastiched to death, there's something uncomfortable about the new cover. Comparing multimillionaires to the historic labourers who helped build New York City feels crass at best and disrespectful at worst, but in a way, it's this very provocation that has powered the AI movement and its evolution. The truth is, AI doesn't care about the nuance of an image when it uses it to generate new content – it's about rapid, instant progression.

I find myself at a crossroads trying to define my feelings about the 2025 Person of the Year cover. On one hand, I am appalled that a piece of history has been bastardised by AI ringmasters; on the other, I recognise that my outrage is futile. AI will continue to cannibalise all existing media, and as a result, it will continue to provoke; that is the tension we are forced to accept. While I may not like that the Architects of AI are Time's Person of the Year, I cannot deny that it's an apt, albeit disconcerting decision.

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