Time debuts an AI chatbot for Person of the Year

Time just dropped its 2024 Person of the Year feature on Donald Trump, but the biggest story might be what is sitting right next to the text: a brand-new AI chatbot.

Instead of just handing readers a massive piece of longform journalism and hoping they scroll to the bottom, the magazine built a dedicated bot to answer questions, generate summaries of various lengths, and play audio narrations of the story.

It can translate the article into six languages: Mandarin, German, Spanish, French, Russian, and Ukrainian. The bot is also prepped to handle queries about the past three winners: Taylor Swift, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Elon Musk.

Chatting with the archives

To build the tool, Time partnered with enterprise AI provider Scale AI. The bot relies on Scale's infrastructure, combining base model knowledge with Time's own reporting and historical archives.

Right now, the bot's scope is deliberately narrow. It focuses on providing background on previous winners, surfacing historical context, and suggesting other relevant Time pieces.

Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs described the chat interface as a new form of recirculation. The idea is to address a reader's question instantly and guide them deeper into the publication's archive.

Chasing engagement over clicks

For now, the tool is completely ad-free. Time chief operating officer Mark Howard revealed that the company wants to gather as much behavioral data as possible before looking at monetization.

Howard stated that the north star metric for the project is total engagement time. The test is whether an interactive assistant keeps people on the page longer than standard editorial layouts.

Time tore down its digital paywall in 2023, shifting its business model toward massive corporate sponsorships around marquee franchises. Down the road, this chatbot interface could easily be bundled into brand sponsorship deals.

This is not Time's first rodeo with artificial intelligence. The outlet inked a multiyear licensing deal with OpenAI in June, partnered early with Perplexity, and joined Fox's blockchain verification network Verify. If this rollout goes well, Howard expects to deploy the chatbot across the broader website in early 2025.

Why it matters

For readers, this turns a heavyweight annual feature into an interactive dossier. Being able to ask targeted questions, dial in a quick bullet-point summary, or translate the piece on the fly makes heavy political journalism far more accessible.

For digital media, Time is tackling the dreaded bounce rate by reinventing how recirculation works. Most publications rely on clickbait thumbnail modules at the bottom of the page. Time is betting that direct conversation is a stickier way to keep users inside its ecosystem.

We think launching this alongside Person of the Year was a brilliant distribution move. It instantly exposes Scale AI's tech to millions of global visitors and delivers immediate real-world usage data.

However, there is a clear strategic tension here. If a bot makes it effortless to digest an article in thirty seconds, readers might spend less time engaging with the actual reporting. Whether conversational engagement translates to deeper brand loyalty and ad dollars remains an open question.