To explore the emotional attitudes of oncology nurses towards artificial intelligence (AI), and to provide reference for targeted nursing management. Methods A descriptive qualitative research method was adopted. Based on the SWOT model, an interview outline was developed. Through purposive sampling, 13 nurses and 4 head nurses from the oncology departments of 4 Grade A tertiary hospitals in Shenzhen were selected for semi-structured interviews, and the content analysis method was used for data analysis. Results A total of 4 themes and 12 sub-themes were extracted, including the positive impacts of AI on nursing work (stimulating the internal motivation to learn AI, empowering oncology nursing, helping improve the quality of clinical nursing services, enabling multidisciplinary collaborative diagnosis, treatment and nursing);the challenges brought by AI application to nurses′ work (the adaption dilemma of elderly nurses to AI, difficulty in identifying the accuracy and authenticity of AI information, nurses′ skill degradation caused by over-reliance on AI, negative emotions induced by AI, higher professional requirements for nurses); external opportunities brought by AI (broader development space, providing opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration); and the application prospects of AI in nursing work (hospital intelligent systems need to be optimized, developing a human-machine collaborative nursing ecosystem). Conclusion The application of AI technology has positive impacts on oncology nursing work and provides more learning opportunities and development space for nurses, but it also brings many challenges. Targeted training and the development of AI application specifications should be adopted to improve the application effect of AI technology in oncology nursing.