Against the background of digital transformation in education, generative AI has opened up new paths for cultivating historical thinking in the university course Outline of Modern Chinese History. Based on the perspective of teaching content and in accordance with relevant educational policies, this paper systematically expounds the functional positioning of generative AI in cultivating college students’ historical thinking, and analyzes practical problems in the transformation of teaching paradigms, such as insufficient content adaptation and fragmented presentation of historical facts. Combined with specific chapters of the course, it puts forward targeted transformation strategies from the perspective of teaching methodology, supplemented by corresponding teaching cases. The research aims to solve the problem of insufficient integration between generative AI and the course teaching, improve the effectiveness of historical thinking cultivation, and provide practical references for the teaching innovation of the Outline course.