Ricardo Funke, the chief of surgery at Clinica Las Condes in Santiago, Chile, had a new assistant during a laparoscopic surgery on Monday - an autonomous artificial intelligence-guided camera that allowed him to carry out a gallbladder removal alone.

The procedure combined magnetic surgical instruments with software that autonomously directs the surgical camera, tracking the surgeon’s tools and adjusting angles without a human assistant.

"The camera was following me wherever I moved my hands and the whole process was excellent," Funke told Reuters after the surgery. "This camera lets us do the surgery alone, I did it alone with the robot."

Companies, universities and research centers across the world have been developing AI-assisted tools to perform or assist in surgery.

According to Precedence Research, the global surgical robot market was estimated to be $15.6 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $64.4 billion by 2034.

In July, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the US reported on an AI-guided robot that carried out a complicated surgical procedure on pig livers and gallbladders.

Researchers said July's surgery hailed a major step towards automated medical procedures, an expectation echoed by Alberto Rodriguez, CEO of Levita Magnetics who provided the technology for Monday's surgery in Santiago.

"This is the first step in surgical automation with a real patient in the operating room where we showed that AI can help the surgeon," Rodriguez said.