AI & Presentations: Which Do We Recommend?
Episode 28 explores why Gamma and Microsoft Copilot are leading the way in AI-powered presentation creation, transforming how busy executives and business leaders create compelling visual stories.
The Presentation Challenge
Creating professional presentations has traditionally been a time-consuming process that requires both design expertise and countless hours of slide tweaking. Many business professionals struggle to transform their content-rich documents into visually appealing decks that effectively communicate their message.
AI is fundamentally changing this landscape, shifting our effort away from fiddling with layouts and towards refining our message. While we still need to provide the final human touch, emerging tools are making it faster and easier than ever to turn ideas into compelling visual stories.
The key question facing professionals today: which AI tool is best for creating and polishing presentations? While no tool has completely perfected the process just yet, we're seeing some brilliant platforms emerge that are changing the game.
Gamma: The Top Recommendation
Design Transformation
Takes text-heavy documents and transforms them into beautiful, engaging presentations with incredible ease
No Designer Needed
Empowers people who aren't designers to create professional-looking slides, unlocking creative potential
Speed & Efficiency
Companies are switching from traditional software to Gamma because of its remarkable speed and intuitive process
"I think Gamma is the best for anyone who has content and wants to make it visual... it just unlocks something within people and it gives people the opportunity to create something that they probably wouldn't ever create themselves."
Gamma (gamma.app) is specifically designed as a game-changer for presentation creation, offering a huge range of templates and an intuitive process that makes professional design accessible to everyone.
Microsoft Copilot: Improving But Needs Direction
The Current State
Microsoft's Copilot is getting better, but still struggles with visual arrangement and identifying the most crucial takeaways from a document. To get the best results, you have to be very precise with your prompts or the document you ask it to create a presentation from.
The tool requires almost pre-structuring your document with an executive summary and bullet points for it to follow. If you have requirements for images, you might be a little disappointed with the current capabilities.
Pro Tips for Success
  • Be extremely specific with your prompts
  • Pre-structure documents with clear sections
  • Include executive summaries and bullet points
  • Always add in your company templates for best results
  • Use at company level on both Gamma and Copilot
The Competitive Landscape
Google Slides & Gemini
Still lagging behind, particularly when it comes to styling and editing visuals. They can transfer a document into slides, but the final product is often basic and requires significant manual work. This is a use case being actively worked on.
Other Tools
Various platforms are emerging, but most aren't quite there yet in terms of delivering polished, professional results without extensive manual intervention and design expertise.
The Future
Within a year, we expect tools will be capable of producing highly polished, end-user-ready presentations with minimal input. The technology is evolving rapidly to meet key business demands.
The Rise of Internal Business Use Cases
A significant shift is happening where AI tools are being adopted more for internal business functions rather than just consumer novelty. Creating decks for quarterly business reviews, management reports, and team updates is a huge time sink that AI is now addressing.
Quarterly Reviews
Business review presentations
Management Reports
Executive summaries and updates
Team Updates
Internal communications
"A lot of the time now the internal use case is becoming more and more important... I think people are now slowly realising, actually I can bring that into the corporate side, the business side." — Danny Denhard
AI toolmakers are now focusing on these corporate use cases, which is driving rapid innovation. There will be significantly more work on docs, sheets/excel, and decks/PowerPoint as the technology matures.
The Optimal Workflow: Human-in-the-Loop
The most effective workflow right now involves a two-stage approach that combines the strengths of different AI tools:
01
Content Creation & Structure
Use conversational AI like ChatGPT or Claude to brainstorm and structure the core content, refining your message and organizing key points
02
Visual Design & Polish
Take the text-based output and use visually-focused tools like Gamma, Microsoft Designer, or Canva to handle the design and final polish
This approach allows you to leverage the best capabilities of each tool type while maintaining human oversight and creative direction throughout the process.
AI Tools for Presentation Creation
Leading Tools
  • Gamma (gamma.app) - Top recommendation
  • Microsoft Copilot - Improving rapidly
  • Canva - Visual design focus
Supporting Tools
  • ChatGPT - Content brainstorming
  • Claude - Text structuring
  • NotebookLM - Research synthesis
Emerging Options
  • Google Slides/Gemini - In development
  • Microsoft Designer - Visual polish
The landscape is evolving rapidly, with new capabilities being added regularly. The pace of improvement is phenomenal, and we expect significant advances within the next year.
The Core Takeaway
Time Transformation
AI is fundamentally transforming the time-consuming task of creating presentations, removing hours of slide tweaking
Focus on Content
Professionals can now concentrate on refining their message and delivering excellence rather than wrestling with layouts
The Future is Bright
Tools like Gamma are making it faster and easier than ever to turn ideas into compelling visual stories
"People are gonna remove the hours and hours of slide tweaking to... actually something they can concentrate on the content and then just deliver excellence." — Danny Denhard
AI is rapidly moving from a consumer novelty to an indispensable business tool for internal communications, saving countless hours and allowing us to focus on what truly matters: the content and its delivery. While we still need to provide the final human touch, the technology is empowering professionals to create presentations they never could have created on their own.
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