[Clinical applications and future perspectives of artificial intelligence-enabled surgical robots in gastrointestinal...

Relying on core technologies including deep learning, radiomics and large language models, artificial intelligence (AI) has covered the full workflow of diagnosis and treatment in gastrointestinal surgery. Meanwhile, continuous iteration and large-scale clinical adoption of surgical robots are driving gastrointestinal surgical procedures toward higher precision and minimal invasiveness. The deep integration of artificial intelligence and surgical robots has reshaped the paradigm of gastrointestinal surgical care, facilitating the disciplinary transformation from conventional minimally invasive surgery to digital, intelligent and precise surgery. This paper reviews cutting-edge advances in robot-assisted gastrointestinal surgery empowered by artificial intelligence, analyzes prevailing bottlenecks hindering clinical translation, including insufficient data standardization, algorithm trustworthiness, and incomplete supporting regulatory and ethical frameworks. Combined with the latest domestic and international research outcomes, it prospects future development pathways, providing references for formulating standards and standardized clinical implementation of intelligent technologies in gastrointestinal surgery. The profound combination of AI and surgical robots breaks through the technical limitations of traditional minimally invasive surgery, bringing revolutionary transformations to the advancement of precise and intelligent gastrointestinal surgery. Gastrointestinal surgeons will not be directly replaced by AI in the future; instead, they will be superseded by peers proficient in AI and robotic technologies, and the evolution of gastrointestinal surgery will inevitably be led by AI-competent clinicians. With joint efforts across multiple disciplines, robot-assisted surgery in the AI era will undoubtedly elevate gastrointestinal surgery to an advanced new level.