How Time's Person of the Year Chatbot Reveals a Path for AI Monetization in Media
Time's AI Bet: Turning Content Archives Into B2B Revenue Engines and Using Strategic AI Partnerships to Scale Global Reach and Revenue
Time’s Person of the Year 2024 is a print cover and a title story with an audio version, summarization, versions in several other languages and an AI chatbot
Time Magazine's AI strategy is not just about technology but about positioning. While most legacy media companies were still figuring out whether to resist or go with the flow of AI, Time had already mapped out a comprehensive approach that turns potential threats into competitive advantages. And while competitors tightened their paywalls, Time removed theirs in 2023 and started focusing on direct B2B relationships.
Revenue Model Transformation
Time's AI strategy builds on a fundamental business model shift. Removing the paywall seems counterintuitive at first. But it actually enables Time's B2B strategy in several ways:
Audience Scale for Partners: Time now has the largest global audience in its 102 years of existence. Free access drives higher readership numbers, which makes Time more valuable to B2B partners who want to reach large, engaged audiences through sponsorships and "high value, high touch, long thinking programs”, as Time CEO Jessica Sibley explained at the inaugural South by Southwest London conference last week.
Direct Relationships with the C-Suite: By removing paywalls, Time makes its premium content freely accessible to the C-suite executives (Chief Communications Officers, Chief Content Officers, etc. and chiefs of staff who support C-suite executives). Time's strategy centers on direct relationships with decision-makers rather than traditional advertising intermediaries, using content as the entry point for broader partnerships. Time maintains constant communication with these clients to understand their rapidly changing needs - from tariffs and global economic shifts to cryptocurrency trends. This proximity to customers enables faster pivoting and more relevant content delivery.
Content as Marketing Tool: The paywall removal allows Time's exclusive content - like the Trump interview that generated "3000 interview articles written about our interview in the first 24 hours" - to circulate widely and demonstrate Time's editorial access and influence to potential corporate partners. This business model reduces dependence on Google algorithm changes and platform intermediaries.
How Time uses the arguments of reach and global visibility to promote the brand to its business partners
The AI Partnership-First Strategy
Instead of either litigation or negotiation with AI companies, Time chose a third path: Negotiate and go all in. This wasn’t just about avoiding legal fees. Time positioned itself strategically with AI companies rather than fighting them. "We'd rather be at the table, which allows us to be in the room with [people] that are smart and building fast,” according to Sibley.
The OpenAI partnership, announced in June 2024, grants OpenAI access to Time's 101 years of archives while providing proper attribution and traffic back to Time.com. "We're partnering with TIME to make it easier for people to access news content through our AI tools, and to support reputable journalism by providing proper attribution to original sources," said OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap.
In addition to the Open AI deal, Time built relationships with Perplexity and other AI companies, creating options and reducing dependency on any single AI platform.
The Time AI Launch: Testing at Scale with Guardrails
Time Magazine’s covers are among the the most iconic in the news magazine industry. People love to be on the cover (Trump even has a framed fake one of himself hanging in his New York Trump Tower office). And the most coveted covers are, of course, the Person of the Year editions. So it’s no wonder that Time launched its AI chatbot alongside the 2024 Person of the Year (Donald Trump) announcement—a calculated move to test the technology with millions of readers simultaneously.
This is smart product strategy. Instead of a quiet beta launch, Time chose their highest-traffic moment to stress-test the technology and gather engagement data. "By debuting the bot with one of its most popular stories of the year, Time will be able to gather chatbot engagement data from millions of global readers at once," Axios reported at the time of launch.
On the other hand, by limiting its scope to the Person of the Year series instead of immediately letting it loose in its whole archive, Time is building safety rails around the project and lessening the risk to its biggest asset: brand trust.
For it AI platform, Time partnered with Scale AI, a company that builds enterprise AI tools. The platform covers the 2024 Person of the Year (Donald Trump) plus the previous three years' winners - Taylor Swift, Volodymyr Zelensky and Elon Musk. It includes translation into Spanish, French, German, and Mandarin, customizable summaries of different lengths, audio versions with voice interaction, chat functionality with article content, and access to previous Person of the Year stories. It's essentially turning static content into an interactive experience, albeit one with guardrails to maintain editorial integrity.
According to Time's official description: "By limiting its source material to approved articles and sources, the chatbot minimizes the risk of spreading inaccurate or unverified information. If a question strays into controversial territory, it redirects the conversation to safer, fact-based topics."
The system operates with these guardrails to ensure inputs are safe and relevant. When users ask questions outside the defined scope, the chatbot responds: "I'm here to discuss Donald Trump and the Time Person of the Year article. If you have questions about him or related topics, feel free to ask."
Left: CEO Jessica Sibley discussing Time’s AI strategy at SXSW London in early June. Right: The bot didn’t really answer my questions about current Trump happenings
However, safety is one aspect and long-term relevance is another. The Time bot clearly has a knowledge cut-off which already makes it feel dated. I asked it why Trump sent the National Guard and 700 Marines to L.A. and it answered that there is no verified information about such a thing. I also asked the bot why Trump and Elon Musk had a falling-out and it referred to the Capitol riot of January, 6, 2021, which is not the most relevant answer anymore.
It remains to seen if the users really appreciate chatting with a bot that is frozen in time, while current events are unfolding at breakneck speed. That is especially questionable if it’s about a world leader who stirs up a new controversy every day. So far, Times seems to still be cautious and has not yet rolled out its AI platform across other content beyond the Person of the Year series, despite earlier announcements that this was planned for early 2025.
Content Protection Through Technology
Time is sophisticated about intellectual property. The company implements real-time monitoring of content usage across the web. "We can completely identify in real time every single day who's scraping, stealing and ripping our content and how they're using it," Sibley explained at SXSW London.
Time uses Content Credentials, an AI verification system developed through the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). This system embeds tamper-evident metadata and digital watermarks into media to authenticate its origin, editing history, and AI involvement.
Content Credentials emerged from a partnership between over 3,700 organizations, including Adobe, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Time. The standard provides a "nutrition label" for digital content, enabling users to verify authenticity and trace modifications. The metadata framework allows TIME to cryptographically sign articles and images, ensuring readers can validate content provenance directly on their platform.
Time also partnered as a pioneer with Fox Corporation to employ Verify, a blockchain-based system for content authentication. This protocol cryptographically signs content on the Polygon network, enabling real-time verification of TIME’s articles and images
These partnerships create a systematic approach to content protection rather than playing whack-a-mole with individual violations. The technology provides evidence for negotiations and partnerships while protecting the content that drives Time’s business model.
Other observations About Time’s AI Strategy
Editorial Strength as Foundation: Time's AI implementation builds from editorial strength rather than replacing it. The company maintains exclusive access to major figures. Donald Trump has given Time more on the record time in 2024 and 2025 than any other media company. Taylor Swift's only interview in five years was with Time. If you are in this unique position, you can yourself enhance premium content via AI (e.g. a Person of the Year bot), but it is much harder to be replaced by other players or by AI.
Measuring Success Through Engagement: Time measures AI success through total engagement time rather than traditional metrics. "The North Star for this is total engagement time," Chief Operating Officer Mark Howard told Axios last year. "Did this help keep people engaged with the content longer than a standard article page?"
Early results show significant impact. The Trump interview generated "3000 interview articles written about our interview in the first 24 hours of that cycle, and then we had 10,000 other digital interviews," according to Sibley at SXSW London.
This focus on engagement rather than just efficiency metrics aligns with Time’s B2B strategy—partners care about audience attention and interaction, not just cost savings.
Strategic Lessons from the Time Case Study
Time's approach offers specific tactical insights for other publishers. What makes the company’s strategy particularly instructive is not so much the technology itself, but how they positioned their organization before implementing it.
Build Editorial Moats First: Time secured exclusive access and editorial relationships before enhancing them with AI. You can't AI your way to editorial excellence, but you can use AI to amplify existing strengths. This mirrors the Philadelphia Inquirer's approach of leveraging 196 years of content archives as a competitive advantage that new media companies can't replicate.
Choose Strategic Positioning Over Reactive Defense: Time negotiated partnerships while competitors were still debating litigation. Early positioning in emerging ecosystems creates long-term advantages.
Implement Systematic Guardrails: Time's careful approach to safety and verification protects their core asset—editorial credibility. Rushing to market without proper safeguards can destroy decades of trust.
Design for Reader Control: Time's AI tools give users choice in consumption rather than forcing specific formats. This creates better user experience and higher engagement.
Measure What Matters: Time focuses on engagement time rather than just efficiency gains. This aligns with their business model where partner value depends on audience attention.
The critical insight from Time's approach: Successful AI implementation in media requires strategic thinking about business model transformation, not just operational efficiency. Time is using AI to strengthen its position in the value chain rather than just cut costs.
Tools used for this newsletter:
Otter.ai: Transcription of the SXSW London Session with Jessica Sibley
Perplexity Pro and Deep Search: Research in selected sources
Anthropic 4.0 Sonnet Pro: Additional research for details, first draft text