Artificial Intelligence in Oncology: Clinical Applications, Challenges, and Opportunities

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping cancer research and clinical oncology by enabling large-scale analysis of complex biomedical data. Although early AI efforts focused on single-modality tasks such as imaging interpretation or pathology classification, contemporary oncology increasingly requires integrated reasoning across heterogeneous inputs, including imaging, digital pathology, and genomics. Multimodal artificial intelligence (MMAI) models represent a major evolution by fusing these data types into unified predictive systems capable of informing diagnosis, risk stratification, treatment selection, and disease monitoring. This manuscript reviews the state of AI in oncology and highlights emerging foundation models within the field. There will be a focus on histopathology, and how this can be incorporated into risk assessment models. There will also be examples of MMAI utility in radiology and spatial proteomics. Additionally, we will discuss ethical and legal implications of MMAI in modern oncology, and recommendations for responsible application within clinical oncology practice.