The obvious giants — Altman, Musk, Bezos, Murati, and Sutskever (now on the cover as the face of his startup SSI) — made the list, no surprise there.
But this year Time shifted its focus hard: AI coverage isn't just about training LLMs anymore, it's about dealing with the fallout.
The less obvious names on the list
Joseph Gordon-Levitt 🎬 That actor, yes. This year the UN named him its first-ever global advocate for digital governance. He's become the loudest voice for creatives fighting Big Tech: he publicly slams AI companies for stealing copyrighted content to train their models and is pushing to repeal the laws that give corporations immunity (that's Section 230).
Paris Hilton 👱♀️ She's become one of the top political lobbyists in AI safety. After the internet got flooded with more than 100,000 explicit deepfakes of her, Paris launched a campaign in the US Congress to pass the DEFIANCE Act — a law against non-consensual deepfake porn. She still finds time to be the face of Google's AI ad campaigns.
Liz Shuler ✊ President of the largest labor federation in the US (AFL-CIO). Time's announcement calls her the person "rallying communities to push back against data centers" — Shuler is fighting for new standards for workers whose jobs are on the automation chopping block.
Bottom line: the AI industry in 2026 isn't just an engineers' club anymore. It's unions, courtrooms, Hollywood, and the fight over copyright.
Full list — on TIME.