BackgroundThe use of artificial intelligence (AI) assisted white light imaging (WLI) detection systems for superficial esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SESCC) is limited by training with images from one specific endoscopy platform.MethodsIn this study, we developed an AI system with a convolutional neural network (CNN) model using WLI images from Olympus and Fujifilm endoscopy platforms. The training dataset consisted of 5892 WLI images from 1283 patients, and the validation dataset included 4529 images from 1224 patients. We assessed the diagnostic performance of the AI system and compared it with that of endoscopists. We analyzed the system's ability to identify cancerous imaging characteristics and investigated the efficacy of the AI system as an assistant in diagnosis.ResultsIn the internal validation set, the AI system's per-image analysis had a sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of 96.64%, 95.35%, 91.75%, 90.91%, and 98.33%, respectively. In patient-based analysis, these values were 90.17%, 94.34%, 88.38%, 89.50%, and 94.72%, respectively. The diagnostic results in the external validation set were also favorable. The CNN model’s diagnostic performance in recognizing cancerous imaging characteristics was comparable to that of expert endoscopists and significantly higher than that of mid-level and junior endoscopists. This model was competent in localizing SESCC lesions. Manual diagnostic performances were significantly improved with the assistance by AI system, especially in terms of accuracy (75.12% vs. 84.95%,p= 0.008), specificity (63.29% vs. 76.59%,p= 0.017) and PPV (64.95% vs. 75.23%,p= 0.006).ConclusionsThe results of this study demonstrate that the developed AI system is highly effective in automatically recognizing SESCC, displaying impressive diagnostic performance, and exhibiting strong generalizability. Furthermore, when used as an assistant in the diagnosis process, the system improved manual diagnostic performance.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12672-023-00694-3.