The evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the educational landscape by enhancing learning experiences and personalizing educational journeys. The advancement of generative AI further rationale the potentiality of building personalized AI tutoring systems (PAITS) that can be a vital to enhance learning outcomes in higher education. It can be a self-regulatory system that works as a personalized tutor to provide support and guidelines according to the individual learner’s needs and preference for progressive learning. However, such a system should be equipped with a set of necessary functionalities so that it can function successfully as a complete AI-enabled system towards achieving improved leaning outcomes. To identify the core functionalities of PAITS that combinedly boosts the learning outcomes is largely unexplored. Therefore, this study aims to explore it according to the state-of-the-art through the content analysis of the existing literature and figure out the key functionalities of PAITS. A qualitative research methodology is adopted in this study to explore the research topic and identify the key functionalities of PAITS through content analysis of existing literature retrieved with a systematic review. The outcome of this study can be considered as a guideline and reference point for building a complete AI-driven PAITS that can work as a successful tool for learners to obtain enhanced learning outcomes in higher education. These key functionalities can be considered as a set of all the required elements for building a complete self-regulatory system that supports personalized learning and fulfils the demand of a personalized tutor for enhanced learning outcomes. It can be beneficial for both practitioners and relevant stakeholders in the context of higher education.

Keywords: Generative AI, Personalized Learning, AI Tutoring, Adaptive Learning, Higher Education.