From hype to homework: what 2025 taught us about AI for veterinary medicine

From hype to homework: what 2025 taught us about AI for veterinary medicineinvestigating evaluation frameworks for large language models and agentic systems that put safety, robustness and human oversight at the centre. 4,5 We should expect similar patterns in veterinary software over the next few years.Risk becomes more complex once AI starts acting outside the consult room.Pet owner symptom checkers on practice websites, chatbots built into apps and generic AI triage tools are already available.For veterinary practices, this may raise practical questions about liability, documentation and how, if at all, these tools are audited against outcomes over time.So what does all of this mean as we head into 2026?First, treat significant automation as a clinical intervention in its own right, not just 'IT'.The imaging AI you deploy, the scribe you trial and the triage bot on your website all influence real animals and real people.Second, use the technology as a digital personal assistant for the foreseeable future, especially for imaging, documentation and triage -the most encouraging studies this year still had people firmly in the loop.Third, link autonomy to governance: the more a system can do on its own, the stronger your local policies, staff training and audit need to be.AI will keep advancing, our job is to make sure that as the machines take on more work, we don't quietly hand over more of the judgement as well.