For the past two weeks, we’ve been discussing how AI (artificial intelligence) is changing the presentation design game. Check out these stats about presentation design:
91% of presenters say they feel more confident when they have a well-designed slide deck
45 % find it difficult to design effective layouts
41% say it’s tough to find or implement good visuals
47% say they generally spend more than 8 hours on design
Does AI have the power to change some of these stats for the better? We hope so. Today, we want to wrap things up with a discussion of the pros and cons of using AI in your presentation design.
The Pros
1. AI Can Save You Time
One of the most time-consuming parts of designing a presentation slide deck is wading through thousands of images and templates to find what you want. Even more frustrating is when you’ve looked through those online banks and libraries only to come up with nothing. You simply can’t find what you want. In those moments, I often wish I was a graphic designer. I wish I had the skills to simply create on the screen what I am envisioning for my presentation. This is one of the huge pros of AI. Artist and XR design manager at Unity, Manuel “Manu.Vision” Sainsily says that “these tools open a path for imaginative people with no visual execution skills to create something visual.” By using text prompts, we can direct AI programs to create for us.
2. AI Offers A Creative Springboard
The blank screen or slide deck is one of the most intimidating parts of presentation design. AI reduces the time you have to spend staring at that blank screen. While we’ve yet to see an AI program that can produce a fully completed slide deck with no need for revision, there are plenty which can get you started. Check out our discussion of Beautiful.ai, Canva, and PowerPoint’s AI capabilities here. For example, Canva’s doc to decks AI generator won’t give you a full presentation, but it might offer an attractive color palette and font choice. PowerPoint’s Designer won’t read your mind, but it will give you several options for an attractive layout which you can mimic for the rest of your slide deck to create a cohesive, professional-looking presentation. One of the biggest pros of AI is that you no longer have to start designing from scratch.
The Cons
1. Program Glitches
While AI for presentations boasts some great pros, it is still a fairly new and developing technology. That means not all the kinks have been worked out of the programs yet. Here are just a couple examples of the issues that may make working with AI for your presentation frustrating:
- In PowerPoint’s Designer, grouped items don’t work well.
- In PowerPoint’s Designer, shapes are not yet compatible.
- Designer also doesn’t read logos as distinct from other images when they are uploaded as picture files which can lead to weird layouts with cropped logos.
- Canva’s text to image tool only produces results in square shapes, so they need to be cropped or altered to fit more traditional presentation sizes.
- Many AI-generated images don’t offer attractive backgrounds. While the primary foreground image may be good, the background often is less aesthetically pleasing.
- AI doesn’t have a way to understand the hierarchy of slide elements. It doesn’t know what is most important on the slide.
2. Things Get Lost in Translation
An AI generator is only as good as a few things:
- the algorithms and searchable menu items that have been built into the program. In other words, the amount of “intelligence” developers structured the program to have.
- the search terms, or prompts, that the user enters to pull back results.
As we all know, human communication isn’t a direct download of information. If I tell my husband a story of something that happened during my day, there is no possible way for him to experience, see, and understand the story exactly like I did. I can share it in the clearest terms possible, but he still reconstructs the story in his mind a little differently. Something always gets lost or changed in the encoding and decoding process. The same thing holds true for AI design. The chances of you pulling back the exact thing you want are pretty slim, if not impossible.
3. Copyright Issues
One of the major drawbacks with AI-generated images and presentations is the question of who owns the product. On one side of the copyright argument is the notion that we already mix creative elements in many ways. Sampling is part of the modern-day, technology-driven creative process. On the other side of the issue is the notion that AI technology can pull back music, artwork, photography, and more from skilled artists who should be compensated for their work and talent. It often takes a while for legislation to catch up with technology, so we’re watching to see how this develops. You can read more about AI copyright issues here.
All-in-all, AI is one more tool in the presentation design toolbox. Is it perfect? No. But it’s developing. And we are excited to see where this technology leads.
In the meantime, you may be hesitant to work with AI programs or you may have tried and found them lacking. If so, consider talking with one of our design experts. They have the skills needed to create a stunning slide deck that meets your specific needs. Check out more of the pros and cons of collaborating with a design expert here. Or get in touch with us now.
