A couple of weeks ago I saw a reel on Instagram in which the creator showed an AI tool which could build PowerPoint slides quickly with relevant information added. Back then I wasn’t making slides very often but I really found this tool interesting and wanted to try it out. So I took the opportunity to try out Plus AI’s tool for making slides in Google’s online Slides platform. Plus AI offers an extension software that can be added to the browser and accessed straight through the Google Slides platform. The tool can be used three times for free, whereas Plus AI also offers subscriptions for Enterprises. It can create slides from scratch but can also be used in a “co-pilot” function where it gives recommendations based on the current slides. Plus AI claims to offer solutions QBR and sales, webinar and training, and strategy and report use-cases (Plus AI, 2023). I decided to add the extension to my Google profile and try to build a presentation from Scratch:
After adding the extension, I was able to access the GUI of Plus AI and check out its functions: You can make slides from scratch, write an entire text which the AI can analyze for important aspects, or specifially decide what content should be displayed on each slide. I went with “start from scratch” and prompted the AI to build a simple 8 slide presentation. It was supposed to showcase the benefits of using the Plus AI tool to students in an educational setting such as the one of BIM students. After a short loading time, I received eight slides that I could move around as I wanted and pick a theme but also create one.
After clicking on next, I was shown eight simple slides with yellow recommendation boxes and short sentences. To anyone who has already played around with generative AI, the format and writing style might be familiar, with hollow sentences and no big messages. In addition, the AI inserts stock imagery that aims to make the slides more visually appealing. What really is interesting is the recommendation system that is at play here. I found it useful at times and something I could hear my tutor give me as a feedback on one of my presentations.
All in all, I took away a couple of positive and mediocre experiences from this endeavour. “Door to door” meaning from installing the software to making slides took me around 10 minutes total, after which I received a structured pre-designed and pre-thought storyline that could be used in an educational setting. I put in the minimal effort of writing 3 sentences as a prompt and received a skelleton that could be filled with ideas, examples and theoretical frameworks. I find this to be helpful in starting off with a presentation. Clearly, this is not presentation ready and I would probably not deliver any valuable insights to my audience, but often starting off is the hardest part. Thus, I would recommend the use of this Plus AI as a brainstorming and ideation tool.
To connect this to our BIM class, I was vaguely reminded of a reading on AI usage in Business settings. In “From prediction to Transformation” by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb (2022), the statement was made that AI tools should not be used to fully replace tasks of humans, but rather augment them. While AI can deliver “predictions of possible outcomes” humans need to “Judge the feasibilities” (Agrawal et al., 2022). In this case, I was delivered with a possible outcome of my slide wishes, after which I needed to judge the feasibility of the output. I think the findings of Agrawal et al. are applicable in this situation and many other situations that managers will experience in the future, when AI becomes more integrated in software for daily use.
What do you think? Would you find this helpful in the future or did you try a different tool?
If you want to take a look at the slides, you can find them here.
References
Plus AI. (2023, September 30). Supercharge your slides with Plus AI. Retrieved from Plus AI: https://www.plusdocs.com/
Agrawal, A., Gans, J., & Goldfarb, A. (2022). From Prediction to Transformation. Harvard Business Review.
Noy, firstly, a very relevant and applicable use case you have explored for students like ourselves, also considering the slide-heavy career paths some of us might follow!
Your experience aligns with my own thoughts having used such tools to help me start or get out of a stuck position when it comes to texts and presentations. While its compatibility with an application like Google Slides considerably lowers the burden to adoption or at least trialing for many, for now, its best use case may be as an assistant. It may kickstart our ideation or help structure our thoughts, as seen with as little given input here, over a certain amount of slides.
I would personally think that its functionality and chance to move to the next level could depend on further building upon the co-pilot function. Acknowledging its limitations in actual content and messaging embedded in the slides themselves, the co-pilot suggestions could be leveraged for specific scenarios. As the level of included detail on the slide may largely depend on the extent of the input, especially in the more general “start from scratch” option, a larger variety of questions posed ex-ante may help.
While not trying to overburden the user, at the start the user may be explicitly asked what the precise purpose of the presentation is; to inform broadly about a certain topic, convince them of a certain strategic investment,… and therefore who the target audience is; an investor, a teacher, a colleague, your boss,… On top of this, being given the option to provide user feedback on different aspects of the generated slides and functionalities of the tool may provide options to improve its messaging, usage of digits and visuals, options for the user to indicate background information, etc. Perhaps these ideas and feeding it sanitized versions of template-like slides desired by the user for certain professional or educational use cases may enable the tool to move beyond being an ideation aid at best.
Thank you for this informative post! I had no idea this tool existed, but it shouldn’t be surprising as AI is implemented into many things recently. For beginners, making (nice) PowerPoints can be pretty daunting and the recommendation option could be very useful in optimizing their design. I even had a class about it back in my first bachelor year as it is also often used in workplaces. Common mistakes are color combinations that make words unreadable, too many words or technical difficulties (loading a video), speaking from personal experience. However, the AI generated designs are indeed not the most creative. I usually download templates made by other people and you can choose them based on themes. To be honest, the AI generated PowerPoint does not hold a candle to those templates. In this case, I agree with you that AI should be used to augment designs. Personally I feel like there are more opportunities in this function that making designs from scratch as design components can be very personal.
I agree with your views here that AI can never replace humans, but can only augment their abilities. Creating a PowerPoint presentation is one of the toughest tasks for many, not because of the technicalities involved in the process, but because defining the storyline is a task. many people shy away from making slides as they don’t know how to start, and for these cases, the AI tool you experienced can be a very good start.
The technical prowess of this tool will come to test if it is able to actually create the slides tailor-made based on the prompts and the requirements of the user, instead of providing a template like ideation aid. We are definitely moving rapidly towards a world where AI and humans will compete for all roles which require manual efforts, but the likelihood of humans winning the race is higher according to me. This is because, as you quoted, AI can give out possibilities, but judging their feasibility requires critical thinking and emotional abilities which AI has not yet learnt well.
Overall, you have shared with us a really helpful AI tool. I would definitely try to experience it first hand myself the next time we have a presentation to make at hand!
Hi,
I also had the opportunity of working and experimenting with such tools during my internship at a financial advisory consulting firm. We had a prestech team which was tasked with creating and finalising slides for the firm which needed to be sent to client. Anlaysts would often ideate the slides on paper or provide a rough sketch to the prestech team and task them with creating the slides. The senior management wanted to try out such tools so they bought the membership of one such tool. At first glance it looked useful but sooner we realised it is not as robust as we expected it to be. To the delight of prestech team who were apprehensive of the move because it threatened their jobs, the management eventually did not go ahead further with the tool as it had very limited scope and ability but kept it open to reference for the prestech team. I feel it can be developed further with making template slides and be used as a very powerful aid in corporate which can help in creating first drafts and ideation. Plug in such as Uplslide can be powered with such add ons to make it easier for firms to create slides. Obviously the solution would be incomplete and require a lot of human intervention but it could for sure be a feasible approach to the problem which can be considered rather than being completely rejected.