Jimmy Kimmel criticizes Time’s ‘Architects of AI’ cover

Kimmel Critiques Time’s 2025 Person of the Year

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel took aim at Time magazine’s cover for its 2025 Person of the Year, which features the so-called “Architects of AI.” He dismissed the group’s eight tech CEOs as “the eight idiots of the apocalypse.”

During Thursday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Kimmel didn’t hold back, criticizing both the magazine’s choice of honorees and the cover art itself, likening it to “Photoshop of 2007.”

The cover showcases influential figures like Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Elon Musk of xAI, Sam Altman from OpenAI, Lisa Su from AMD, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind, Dario Amodei from Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li from Stanford and World Lab.

As Kimmel introduced the segment, the audience reacted with boos when he joked, “Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and five other mismatched engineer sisters and brothers who are architects of AI are this year’s winners.”

He seemed to expect a more enthusiastic response from the crowd before resuming his critique of these AI leaders.

Kimmel raised an interesting point, asking if architects typically design without knowing how their creations will function—or if there might eventually be consequences for their work. This echoing of a broader concern, regarding AI taking over jobs, resonated in his commentary.

He underscored the irony of those being replaced by technology receiving such an accolade.

Turning back to the cover art, he requested the producers to display it again for further mockery, quipping, “Ironically, I like to say everything you can do graphically with AI is like Photoshop in 2007.”

Time magazine described the cover as an homage to a famous 1932 photograph showing construction workers on a steel girder above New York City’s RCA Building.

AI’s rapid development is a hot topic, and many speculate it will cause significant societal shifts as technology further integrates. According to Time, “Thanks to Mr. Huang, [SoftBank’s Masayoshi] Son, Altman, and other AI giants, humanity is currently hurtling down the highway, without accelerating or braking, toward a highly automated and highly uncertain future.”