Objective To understand the willingness and needs of diabetes patients for artificial intelligence telephone follow-up, and to provide a reference for building a more practical artificial intelligence telephone follow-up plan. Methods A descriptive qualitative study was designed, and self-drafted outline was used to perform in-depth interviews with 16 type 2 diabetes inpatients in the department of endocrinology of a tertiary A-level hospital in Guangzhou from December 2023 to May 2024. Content analysis was used to analyze the interview data and extract themes. Results Four themes were extracted: hope to receive artificial intelligence telephone follow-up services; hope to clearly indicate hospital identity in artificial intelligence telephone follow-up; hope to provide personalized follow-up guidance in artificial intelligence telephone follow-up (personalized follow-up needs of elderly patients, personalized dietary guidance needs, customized blood glucose management guidance, psychological support needs); hope to combine artificial intelligence telephone follow-up with manual follow-up (the demand for integrating artificial intelligence and manual follow-up, expectations for manual follow-up, and the need for multimodal information provision). Conclusion Diabetes patients hope to receive artificial intelligence telephone follow-up. It is suggested that the hospital should build an artificial intelligence telephone follow-up system to provide professional and personalized telephone follow-up services for diabetes patients, and combine manual follow-up with multimodal methods to improve the reliability and effect of follow-up.