The application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is profoundly changing our education model and learning methods. The course teaching empowered by AI pursues a new concept of intelligent classroom, personalized teaching, and adaptive learning. Artificial intelligence will deeply reshape the inquiry based, debate based, and diagnostic based classroom teaching models, providing customized teaching resources, realizing personalized teaching design, teaching organization, and teaching evaluation, and carefully creating experiential teaching paths to cultivate students’ higher-order thinking abilities through human–machine collaborative teaching paradigms. By leveraging advanced artificial intelligence technologies such as big data analysis, machine learning, natural language processing, and automated scoring systems, teaching reform can be carried out. Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) provides teachers with more technological empowerment in teaching resources, teaching content, teaching design, teaching organization, and teaching evaluation. Teachers will transform from traditional knowledge transmitters to supporters, collaborators, and guides of student learning, assisting teachers in better focusing on the core of teaching. AI intelligent mentors, AI learning platforms, intelligent tutoring systems, AI teaching assistants, virtual reality, AI chatbots and other artificial intelligence applications provide customized learning resources for students, plan learning paths and scenarios, provide personalized learning content, and provide real-time feedback, improving students’ learning experience and effectiveness, and promoting the reform of modern higher education teaching.