Abstract: In recent years, with the large-scale deployment of Internet of things (IoT) devices, there has been a growing emergence of malicious code targeting IoT devices. IoT security is facing significant threats from malicious code, necessitating comprehensive research on IoT malware detection techniques. Following the remarkable achievements of artificial intelligence (AI) in fields such as computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP), the IoT security field has witnessed numerous efforts in AI-based malware detection as well. By reviewing relevant research findings and considering the characteristics of IoT environments and devices, we propose a classification method for the primary motivations behind research in this field and analyze the research development in IoT malware detection from two perspectives: malware detection techniques towards IoT device limitation mitigation and IoT malware detection techniques towards performance improvement. This classification method encompasses the relevant research in IoT malware detection, which also highlights the unique characteristics of IoT devices and the current limitations of the IoT malware detection field. Finally, by summarizing existing research, we extensively discuss the challenges present in AI-based malware detection and present three possible directions for future research that consists of combining foundation models in IoT malware code detection, improving the safety of detection models, and combining zero trust architecture in this field.