In recent years, the application of artificial intelligence(AI)has been greatly promoted in medical care, especially in the field of image recognition which has played an irreplaceable role in the diagnosis of ophthalmic diseases. AI has made remarkable achievements in the diagnosis and treatment of anterior segment diseases such as classification of infectious keratitis, screening of keratoconus, grading of lens opacity, automatic staging of cataract surgery videos, prediction of postoperative refraction status, and the diagnosis of primary angle-closure glaucoma. It is promising that AI could help solve many clinical problems and realize early diagnosis and treatment of diseases. However, there are still some challenges such as the ambiguity of black-box process, the absence of public data sets and the complexity of algorithms. In this paper, the current studies of AI applications in anterior segment diseases have been reviewed in detail. Also, the challenges and future directions of AI in ophthalmology have been proposed.