Artificial intelligence is unlocking new capabilities for the study of freshwater ecosystems. The presentations from our special session, “AI in freshwater science: Transforming aquatic ecology and sustainability with artificial intelligence,” highlight the breadth of potential AI applications for processing high volumes of information, identifying patterns, supporting optimal decision making, and perhaps in the not too distant future, providing reasoning related to questions about ecological systems. Yet, working across disparate ecological and computational fields also presents new challenges for collaborators. In this session wrap up, we look to future prospects in harnessing AI for freshwater science and identify helpful takeaways for catalyzing deeper collaboration across ecological and AI domains.