Esophageal cancer is a serious threat to the health of Chinese people. The key to solve this problem is early diagnosis and early treatment, and the most important method is endoscopic screening. The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology makes its application and research in the field of digestive endoscopy growing, and it is expected to become the "right-hand man" for endoscopists in the early diagnosis of esophageal cancer. Currently, the application of multimodal and multifunctional AI systems has achieved good performance in the diagnosis of superficial esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and precancerous lesions. This study summarized and reviewed the research progress of AI in the diagnosis of superficial esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and precancerous lesions, and also explored its development direction in the future.