How to Use AI for Business Presentations. Pros and Cons
November 28, 2024
How do you use AI to create business presentations? What AI tools can you use to create business presentations? What are the pros and cons of using artificial intelligence for writing a PowerPoint presentation?
Meet the Author: Benjamin Ball
Ben is the founder of Benjamin Ball Associates and leads the presentation coaching and pitch deck creation teams. Formerly a corporate financier in the City of London, for 20+ years he’s helped businesses win with better pitches and presentations, particularly investor pitches. He is a regular speaker and a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School and UCL London. Follow Ben on LinkedIn or visit the contact page.
AI is all the rage. Everyone is talking about it. Everyone is investing in it. Every bit of software is AI enhanced. But how can you use artificial intelligence to make presenting easier and what are the risks of using AI to prepare PowerPoint presentations?
How good are the AI presentation tools and are AI presentations great presentations or just eye-catching presentations? AI slide makers are certainly impressive, but if you are making a new slide deck, how do you use ai presentation software to make compelling pitch decks?
The AI Software Experiment – How to use AI for business presentations
I spent the day using AI to help me write this article and create some professional presentations.
The topic I chose was “How to use AI to create business presentations” and I started from scratch to see where AI presentation tools could help. We used AI to help brainstorm ideas, to organise ideas and to design slides. We used the ai slide maker Beautiful.ai, ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
Throughout, we reviewed the AI outputs and compared them with what we would expect from a professional who was working on the same project.
In this article, anything written in BLACK or GREEN is written by humans.
Anything in RED is created by A.I.
My conclusion – How to use AI for Business Presentations:
AI for creating PowerPoint presentations is over-hyped. While AI output might look good, it is unlikely to make you look good.
AI can help you in brainstorming, organising thoughts and designing slides, but you must not rely on it
AI is not yet good enough to create compelling business communications or slide decks.
AI does not think. It can research and organise but you need to do the thinking so that you achieve what you want with your presentation.
We had a client recently who had an AI business creating business plans and pitch decks from innovative ideas. Interestingly, their AI-generated pitch deck did not work with investors. They needed our help and our expertise to create a compelling investor pitch deck!!
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At Benjamin Ball Associates, we’ve been coaching business people to improve their business communication skills for over 15 years. Our coaching is fast and effective. We work with individuals and with companies, one-to-one and in groups. Call us today to learn more.
“I honestly thought it was the most valuable 3 hours I’ve spent with anyone in a long time.”
How I used AI to organise my thinking for business presentations
To test the power of AI, I started with a prompt which I fed into both ChatGPT and Google Gemini to see where it took us.
AI Prompt I Used
“How can I use AI to help create great business presentations? Please discuss the pros and the cons. Consider all aspects of the presenting process from planning, structuring, slide creation etc. Please suggest recommended tools that are proven to save time and effort. Please suggest prompts that will help at each stage. Let me know where AI can add great value, where I run risks using AI and where I should not use AI.”
This was the ChatGPT response
Using AI to Create Business Presentations: Pros and Cons AI can significantly enhance the process of creating effective presentations, from planning to design. However, it’s important to balance its advantages with potential risks to ensure your presentation remains impactful and professional.
How AI Adds Value
Planning and Structuring AI tools like ChatGPT can help you craft a clear structure by generating outlines or organising content into sections (e.g., introduction, body of your presentation, conclusion). Prompt: “Create a presentation outline on [topic], focusing on [main ideas].”
Content Creation AI can suggest main ideas, develop talking points, or write engaging scripts. It can also summarise large documents into most important points. Prompt: “Write a summary of [report] highlighting key points for a business audience.”
Slide Design Tools like Canva’s AI or Beautiful.ai automate slide creation, offering visual aids, templates, and layouts that save much time. Prompt: “Design a presentation with [X] slides on [topic], including visuals for [key sections].”
Data Visualisation AI-powered platforms like Tableau or Flourish help transform data into professional, easy-to-understand charts and graphics. Prompt: “Create a visualisation for [dataset] to show trends over time.”
Practice and Delivery AI tools like Presenter Coach (Microsoft PowerPoint) provide feedback on pacing, tone, and word choice, helping you refine your delivery.
Risks of Using AI
Generic or Inaccurate Content AI may produce content that lacks depth or is factually incorrect. Always verify data and tailor language to your audience.
Overuse of Automation Relying too heavily on AI for design or content risks creating presentations that feel impersonal or lack creativity.
Confidentiality Issues Using sensitive business data with AI platforms could lead to data security risks. Avoid sharing proprietary information.
Lack of Customisation AI tools may miss nuances specific to your subject or fail to fully align with your brand’s tone.
Where to Avoid AI
Personal Stories: AI cannot replace your unique experiences. Share real-world examples to connect emotionally with your audience.
Complex Judgments: For strategic or controversial topics, rely on human expertise to navigate nuances.
Final Review: Proofread slides manually to ensure consistency, clarity, and professionalism.
Recommended Tools
For Planning & Content: ChatGPT, Jasper, Notion AI
For Design: Canva, Beautiful.ai, Microsoft Designer
For Data Visualisation: Tableau, Flourish
For Delivery: Microsoft PowerPoint’s Presenter Coach, Orai
By integrating AI strategically, you can save time and improve your presentations. However, always ensure a balance between automation and human input to maintain authenticity and accuracy.
Our review of the ChatGPT response
This response about how to use AI for business presentations is perfectly competent, probably what I would expect a smart 16-year-old to write if given the same task. But, unlike a 16-year-old, the AI-powered tools of ChatGPT took about a minute to write this.
What I did not like about this response is that it is just a collection of facts. It does not really offer much guidance not does it have any personality. While probably factually accurate, it’s very forgettable and probably has limited value in helping me make decisions about where to and where not to use AI.
So, I turned to Google Gemini and used the same prompt:
Gemini AI Response
Leveraging AI for Stellar Business Presentations
AI has revolutionized the way we create and deliver presentations. By automating mundane tasks and providing creative inspiration, AI can significantly enhance the quality and efficiency of your presentations.
Planning and Structuring
Pros: AI can help you organize your thoughts, identify key points, and create a logical flow. Cons: Overreliance on AI might lead to a lack of originality and personal touch.
Recommended Tools:
Jasper.ai: A versatile AI writing assistant that can help you brainstorm ideas, write outlines, and create engaging introductions and conclusions.
Prompts:
“Generate a creative presentation title for a [topic] audience.” “Create a detailed outline for a [topic] presentation, including key points and subpoints.” “Write a compelling introduction for a presentation on [topic].”
Slide Creation
Pros: AI can automate slide design, generate visuals, and suggest color palettes and fonts. Cons: AI-generated slides might lack creativity and personalization.
Recommended Tools:
Canva: A user-friendly design tool that offers AI-powered features like automatic design suggestions and image generation. Beautiful.ai: An AI-powered presentation tool that automatically generates slides based on your input.
Prompts:
“Create a visually appealing slide design for a [topic] presentation.” “Generate a slide with a [type of visual] to illustrate [point].” “Suggest a color palette and font combination for a professional presentation.”
Content Generation
Pros: AI can generate engaging content, such as stories, statistics, and quotes. Cons: AI-generated content might not be accurate or relevant to your specific audience.
Recommended Tools:
Jasper.ai: Can generate various types of content, including product descriptions, blog posts, and social media posts.
Prompts:
“Write a persuasive argument for [point].” “Generate a compelling story about [topic].” “Find relevant statistics to support [claim].”
Rehearsal and Delivery
Pros: AI can provide feedback on your delivery, such as pacing, tone, and body language. Cons: AI cannot fully replicate the nuances of human interaction.
Recommended Tools:
Presentation Coach (Google Slides add-on): Provides real-time feedback on your delivery.
Prompts:
“Analyze my presentation for pacing and clarity.” “Identify areas where I can improve my body language.” “Provide feedback on my tone of voice.”
Where AI Adds Great Value:
Automating repetitive tasks: AI can save you time by automating tasks like slide design, content generation, and formatting. Generating creative ideas: AI can help you brainstorm new ideas and approaches to your presentation. Improving the quality of your content: AI can help you create more engaging and persuasive content.
Where to Exercise Caution:
Overreliance on AI: While AI can be a powerful tool, it’s important to use it judiciously. Overreliance on AI can lead to a lack of originality and creativity. Accuracy and relevance: Always double-check the accuracy and relevance of AI-generated content, as it may contain errors or biases. Ethical considerations: Be mindful of the ethical implications of using AI, such as potential biases in AI algorithms.
Where Not to Use AI:
Building relationships: AI cannot replace human connection and empathy. Complex decision-making: AI is not a substitute for critical thinking and human judgment. Highly sensitive or confidential information: Avoid using AI with sensitive or confidential information.
By understanding the strengths and limitations of AI, you can effectively use it to create impactful and engaging presentations.
Our review of the Google Gemini response
While the content for the prompt How to use AI for business presentations is broadly similar in both ChatGPT’s and Gemini’s response, Gemini seems to give more nuance to the pros and cons of the subject. The arguments seem more robust and it probably gives better advice.
But, both responses make some poor assumptions:
They both assume that “Creating Content” is a boring, repetitive process rather than the core job of someone who is going to present information
They both assume that creating slides is an essential part of presenting, whereas slides can sometimes get in the way. Perhaps a short talk, a memo or an email is all you need.
They assume that technology is the answer to a presenting problem, rather than looking what makes business communication work.
Can AI help with understanding what an audience wants to know?
Next, I wanted to brainstorm some ideas for the questions my audience might ask about this topic so I could decide whether to answer them in the presentation or whether I needed to prepare answers for any Q&A session.
ChatGPT PROMPT
The prompt I used for ChatGPT was:
“What questions might the audience ask about this topic?”
ChatGPT Response
General Questions
What are the best AI tools for creating business presentations How can AI help save time during the presentation creation process? Can AI make my presentation more engaging for different audiences?
Practical Use
How do I ensure AI-generated content is accurate and professional? Are there any free AI tools I can use for presentation design? How can I use AI to create better visuals or data charts?
Risks and Limitations
What are the risks of relying too much on AI for presentations? How do I protect sensitive business data when using AI tools? Can AI replace the creative or personal aspects of presentations?
Advanced Questions
How do I use AI to tailor a presentation for a specific audience or tone? Can AI help me rehearse or improve my delivery style? What’s the best way to balance AI automation with personal input?
Future-Oriented Questions
How will AI tools for presentations evolve in the future? Will AI eventually make traditional presentation tools obsolete? Can AI help predict the effectiveness of a presentation before delivering it?
Our review of the ChatGPT response
All of these questions seem reasonable. It was useful that ChatGPT categorised the questions into sections. Chat definitely can add value here in that it took just a second to create this list, which would have taken anyone else 10-20 minutes to produce. With a bit more time and thought, we could have added to this list and then started to answer some of the questions.
Can AI create a powerful presentation outline?
Having gathered those thoughts, I then asked ChatGPT to create a presentation outline. I thought this might give me my slide titles and main content for each page of a presentation.
Is AI a great way to create an outline for a new presentation? Or will it fail in this task? Given that a presentation outline is one of the key jobs when preparing a presentation, I was keen to see how much value AI would add to the process.
ChatGPT Prompt
The prompt I used was:
Create a detailed outline for a presentation “How to use AI to create great business presentations” , including key points and sub-points’
ChatGPT Response
Outline: How to Use AI to Create Great Business Presentations
1. Introduction
A. Importance of Effective Business Presentations Role in decision-making, communication, and influence.
B. Why Use AI in Presentations? Improved efficiency and quality.
C. Overview of Key Topics Planning, structuring, slide design, and delivery.
2. Planning Your Presentation with AI
A. Defining Objectives and Audience Example Prompt: “What are the key elements to include in a presentation for [target audience] on [topic]?”
B. Brainstorming Content Example tools: Notion AI, Jasper.
C. Structuring the Content Example Prompt: “Generate an outline for a presentation about [topic].”
3. Designing Slides with AI
A. Automating Slide Layouts Tools like Canva and Beautiful.ai for professional templates. Best Practices: Align visuals with the brand identity.
B. Creating Visual Aids AI for designing charts, infographics, and diagrams (e.g., Tableau, Flourish). Example Prompt: “Create a bar chart showing [data trends].”
C. Enhancing Design Consistency Using AI to suggest colour palettes, fonts, and animations.
4. Enhancing Content with AI
A. Summarising Complex Information Tools like ChatGPT or Bard for condensing long documents. Example Prompt: “Summarise this report into 5 key points.”
B. Personalising Content Tailoring language to your audience or tone. Example Prompt: “Rewrite this slide content to sound more engaging for [audience type].”
C. Ensuring Clarity and Simplicity AI for grammar and readability checks (e.g., Grammarly).
5. Practising and Delivering Your Presentation
A. AI-Powered Feedback Tools Microsoft Presenter Coach, Orai for pacing, tone, and filler word detection.
B. Simulating Q&A Sessions Use AI to predict audience questions and prepare responses. Example Prompt: “What questions might the audience ask about [topic]?”
6. Risks and Limitations of Using AI
A. Over-Reliance on Automation Risks of generic or impersonal content.
B. Accuracy and Fact-Checking Importance of verifying AI-generated information.
C. Confidentiality Concerns Avoid sharing sensitive business data with AI platforms.
7. Recommended Tools for Each Stage
Planning and Structuring: ChatGPT, Jasper, Notion AI. Design: Canva, Beautiful.ai, Microsoft Designer. Data Visualisation: Tableau, Flourish. Delivery: Microsoft Presenter Coach, Orai.
8. Practical Examples and Case Studies
A. Successful Use Cases of AI in Business Presentations B. Demonstration of Tools in Action
9. Conclusion and Next Steps
A. Key Takeaways AI enhances efficiency, creativity, and professionalism.
B. Action Plan How to start integrating AI into your presentation workflow.
C. Final Q&A Session
Our Review of the ChatGPT Outline
What is disappointing about this outline how to use AI for business presentations is that it is just a collection of facts. There is little in the outline that will help make a compelling presentation. There seems to be a big disconnect between gathering a bunch of information and turning it into a powerful presentation outline.
Given that creating a presentation outline is an essential part of preparing a powerful business communication, ChatGPT failed in the task we gave it.
Next, how can we use AI to design presentations
Now, I took out a subscription to the dedicated AI presentation maker Beautiful.ai.
First, I used its fully AI powered presentation-making tool and entered the prompt:
“How to create business presentations using AI”
The result, an AI-generated presentation in 1 minute:
It certain looks professional on the surface, and contains some good content, but does this really work as a presentation? The answer is no.
For example, let’s look at one slide:
With the title Key Takeaways, this should be the most useful page in the presentation, but does it really tell you anything? And does it address the statement: “How to create business presentations using AI.”
In reality, everything on this page is blah blah. It talks about the possible benefits of AI, but does not address the issue of HOW to use AI.
Again, I tried Beautiful.ai and fed it with the ChatGPT Generated outline above:
This was the output:
As you can see, these all look beautiful on the surface, but they fail all the core tests of a great presentation. The messaging is weak, they are text-heavy slides and every page is topic-led and not message-led.
For this reason, it might be worth considering Beautiful.ai to lay out some content you have created, but we do not recommend relying on it to create visual aids.
So, having been disappointed at how AI created an outline and a presentation, I decided to manually create a presentation outline and then feed that into the AI.
Using best practice in presentation messaging, I created this following outline which should give a powerful structure to a presentation about How to use AI to create business presentations.
Human-Generated Presentation Outline
How to use AI to create powerful business presentations
Is AI a useful tool or a distraction?
AI can be useful, but, like all business tools, needs to be handled carefully
It can help, but will not substitute clear thinking
Use it to prompt ideas and design, not to think
Like a talking bird. AI does not understand. It just sounds like it understands
Where AI can add most value to business presentations?
Use AI to brainstorm ideas – then start thinking
Use AI to suggest organising thoughts – then start thinking
Use AI to suggest design for documents – but don’t rely on it
AI is only as good as the prompts you give it.
You need to be clear, specific and comprehensive in your prompts
BAD PROMPT: Create a presentation about using AI to create business presentations
BETTER PROMPT: What are the pros and cons of using AI to create business presentations and how can I best use it to save time and money.
Never trust what AI tells you. Be a sceptic.
You need to use common sense and understand your audience to decide if AI is giving you good advice.
For example, recent AI responses included:
You should always have an agenda slide – NO
Finish your presentation with Q&A – NO
These topics are recommended slide titles – NO
AI can be a useful brainstorming tool
Use it to prompt ideas
Get it to summarise information on the internet
But, like all brainstorming, you need to sort the wheat from the chaff.
AI can be useful for organising your thoughts
See if it helps give you some ideas or structure
But make sure you do the real thinking
AI can help design documents
But fancy design is no substitute for clear thinking
AI-generated slides tend to be too wordy
AI is not good at creating clever graphics that make it easy for your audience.
Risks and problems using AI for presentations
AI can get things wrong – check your facts
AI does not understand your audience and what they want
AI has no personality – you won’t get a brilliant metaphor or analogy
AI is generic – you won’t sound original or interesting
AI eats up your personal information – don’t trust it!
Think of AI like a computer
Computers can’t think
The output is only as good as the input
Don’t rely on it
I gave Beautiful.ai the prompt:
“please create a professional business presentation using these words and do not add any additional words”.
Unfortunately, it create a presentation very similar to the last one. It ignored the instructions in my prompt.
Perhaps I was using the AI software incorrectly. I was hoping for a completely intuitive interface. Nevertheless, having given it a specific prompt, my instructions were not followed.
What about using AI to polish your presentation delivery?
So, if AI is not great at creating or designing presentation, can it help with improving delivery?
I’ve not done any proper research on the various tools available to help with presentation delivery, but this article by Nina Surya in Forbes suggested that using AI tools to improve presentation delivery may actually be counter productive. Why? Because AI is not good at understanding natural behaviours and personal style.
What I have learned about using AI tools to create a business presentation
It’s clear that AI is over-hyped as an aid for writing presentations. You can use it to help brainstorm and perhaps organise your thoughts, but do not rely on it.
You don’t become a master craftsman by buying an expensive lathe. To be good at crafting presentations, you need to understand what makes communication work and how to craft compelling messages. AI might help you with this, but it is not a substitute for your own expertise.
In the wrong hands, AI will cause more `Death by PowerPoint’, not less.
What to do next
AI is not enough. If you want to create compelling business presentations and if you want to use AI tools to help you, you need to learn the basic of business presenting. Discover the art and science of world-class presentation skills with professional coaching.
We’ve been coaching business executives and leaders for 15 years to create and deliver powerful talks and presentations. Learn more about our intensive presentation skills coaching courses today. Then you’ll be able to use AI tools to save you time and effort.
Or, if you’d like us to run a bespoke masterclass in your offices on How to Use AI to Support Your Pitches and Presentations, get in touch today.
Call Louise on + 44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com
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