There is an important business meeting coming up. I need to create a branded presentation for my talk in front of business leaders, and I figure I’ll use this opportunity to test out an AI presentation design platform. I am a novice with AI tools for designing presentations and want to approach this exercise through the lens of professionals that must knock it out of the park.

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A quick Google search leads me to the top-ranked platforms. The following is my inner monologue combining my experiences with five different platforms (Microsoft CoPilot for PowerPoint was not included in this experiment. That will come in a later post. My aim was to document and share my experience to hopefully speed up your own explorations.

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Your user profile

I have a working understanding of presentation software. I am pressed for time and precision where wow-factor and hassle-free are paramount. Design is not my forte and building presentations is not my job. Can I use AI to get this done faster than using PowerPoint (Keynote or Google Slides), like I have always done? Can I side-step using a freelancer or presentation design agency? Can I save budget?

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Does this describe you? Read on.

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Attempt #1

First up, ChatGPT. It’s been a huge help for drafting copy and the search results are so much easier than scouring the web for information. I am very impressed by (dare I say love) ChatGPT. Let’s type in some prompts and upload my outline. Now let’s answer a few questions it needs clarification on.

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Wow that was quick! Wait a minute. What the heck did it do with my content? It rewrote my talking points! The design and formatting are all messed up. It broke my PowerPoint template. While I do like some of the content edits and it did a good job summarizing my content, it hijacked my narrative and voice.

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I’ll just get more specific with my prompts. Geez, I feel like I’m wrestling with this thing. 30-minutes have gone by, and I am no closer to what I need. It would have been faster to just copy/paste my content into my company’s PowerPoint template myself. This just isn’t ChatGPT’s lane. Let’s try an AI application specific to designing presentations.

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Attempt #2

This one looks promising. It says that it can, “…transform any text into a dynamic presentation in minutes.” and “…effortless presentations”. Let’s go!

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Just a few prompts to create a free account. Some questions about my intended use, who I am, what I do, what kind of presentation I need to create and I’m in.

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Uploading my script was drag and drop. Super quick and easy. Uploaded my PowerPoint template into the theme function. Hmm, it didn’t apply the theme. Can’t figure it out. I’ll ask the built-in AI agent to do it for me. That did the trick. Pretty slick!

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Hold on, the font and colors are wrong. My logo is missing, and the AI agent says it can’t find it. But my logo is in the PowerPoint template I just uploaded! It wants me to upload the files for my logo, images, icons, etc. I don’t have those. I really don’t have time to contact our marketing department, much less sort through our brand assets.

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Ok. I’m going to skip that step and see what happens. I’ll upload the company brand guidelines. What? It won’t accept the pdf my brand team created? It says I need to extract all the images, logo, etc. to upload them as JPG, PNGs, and such. Ok fine. I’ll invest some time exploring the interface and use the AI agent to figure it out. Should be easy enough.

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Ah-ha, now I see the hexadecimal codes for my brand colors imported incorrectly. I’ll need to rekey those in from the brand guidelines, but weren’t they included in the theme I imported from my template? It also looks like I am limited in what types of graphic assets I can upload. How do I get my brand photography in there? It’s trying to be clever and choose the imagery it deems best for my content from the web. I need to purchase a Pro subscription to upload my font files? I’m not slapping my company credit card down, let alone my personal card for this experiment.

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Alright, I’m about to give up. An hour has gone by, but let’s stick it out. Let’s explore the design tools to see if I can edit these slides on my own. Wait a minute, these are the same tools as PowerPoint, just presented differently. Do I really have time to learn another presentation software? No.

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Testing the output

Let’s hit “Share the link” and see what happens. It generated an in-app presentation requiring an internet connection. Will I have one? Will the computer I’m presenting on be able to present this? Will the production team be able to use this? I don’t know and I’ve been down this road before. Not going to risk it. 

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I do have the option to export as a PowerPoint presentation file. Excellent! PowerPoint remains the gold standard for production crews. After all, it’s on every computer in the world. Let’s give that a go! One click and voila, there’s my PowerPoint file. Very cool.

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Well, it broke all the formatting. I’ll need to fix that. What happened to the animations? They’re gone. Let’s reapply the master template layouts. They’re all blank. The theme is gone, the fonts are wrong, and the template is broken. Great. I already had a perfectly functioning presentation template from the brand team in hand. I’ll have to start over.

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How much time have I spent on this? Let’s not give up yet. Growth mindset, right? Of course there is a learning curve. Let’s explore a bit and try a bit harder to give it a fair shot.

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Hold on a sec, what’s this over here? I just stumbled upon the Data Control setting, and it states, “Allow my content to be used to improve our AI features”. Um, did my confidential content just get uploaded to a publicly available data set? Can I even know for sure? This is making me nervous!

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Now it says I’m running out of credits and need to purchase a Pro subscription. It’s asking for my credit card. No way am I slapping down my personal card for my business presentation. My CFO will have my head if I use my business credit card. I can hear them exclaiming, “You need to be using the software we supply you and are already paying for!”

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I give up. I have another meeting right now and need to move on. And I still don’t have my presentation in-hand.

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Attempt #3

‍There will be no attempt #3.

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In summary

• Most AI tools for presentation design generate an in-app presentation that is not native, nor compatible with live production environments.

• Exporting to PowerPoint will require the presentation to be manually reformatted and designed to achieve a professional level. This requires more time than creating the presentation in a properly constructed PowerPoint (.potx) template file.
• These platforms struggle to import assets from a brand guide. The user will have to upload and test each asset. Essentially, the user will have to train the AI.
• While these tools are great for quick outlines, there are mixed results applying brand colors and fonts, and they struggle to use appropriate brand imagery. AI platforms tend to favor their own suggestions for content and style.
• These apps are better for schoolwork or engagements that don’t require a high level of production value.

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Honestly, I was hoping to find some shortcuts to increase the speed of delivery for our clients. I want to learn what AI can do for me, not what it is going to do to me. At this point in time, I would have been better off doing it myself, or even better, asking one of our awesome presentation designers to knock it out of the park. That’s what I ended up doing and I was proud of the presentation I delivered in my meeting.

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Check out the presentation!