A look at the emerging trends of large language models in ophthalmology

As the surge in large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications in ophthalmology continue to expand, this review seeks to update physicians of the current progress, to catalyze further work to harness its capabilities to enhance healthcare delivery in ophthalmology.

Generative AI applications have shown promising performance in Ophthalmology. Beyond native LLMs and question-answering based tasks, there has been increasing work in employing novel LLM techniques and exploring wider use case applications.

In this review, we first look at existing LLM use case applications specific to Ophthalmology, followed by an overview of commonly used LLM techniques. We finally focus on the emerging trends of the generative AI space with an angle from ophthalmology.