3 Tools to Generate PowerPoint with AI from Text

Kevin Goedecke
7 min readOct 31, 2023

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Generate PowerPoint presentations from text using AI

Creating sleek and professional PowerPoint presentations can be time-consuming and tedious. Thankfully, new tools are emerging that can automatically generate PowerPoint from text with AI. These text-to-presentation tools utilize AI and ChatGPT to transform text content into visually appealing and engaging slide decks. They can save substantial time and effort when building presentations compared to manual creation.

In this post, we’ll compare four different AI services that generate PowerPoint presentations from text — SlideSpeak.co, Microsoft Copilot and SlidesAI.

These generators utilize AI to create PowerPoint presentations from text, incorporating relevant images, icons, design themes and layouts to create captivating presentations with almost no work effort. By automating much of the heavy lifting of presentation creation, these AI-powered tools enable users to focus on refining quality content rather than building slides from scratch.

How do AI PowerPoint Generators Work?

AI PowerPoint generators use artificial intelligence to read and understand text. They pick out the main points and turn those points into slides with designs, images and flow. This allows the AI to automatically create a complete PowerPoint presentation from text, without the usual work of making slides manually.

Here’s a quick overview of how generating PowerPoint presentations with AI typically works:

  1. Upload a document or text that provides the necessary context
  2. Specify the target audience for the presentation
  3. Select a theme/design for the presentation
  4. The AI generates a PowerPoint based on the input
  5. Modify the adjust the presentation to your needs

Obviously there’s small nuances on how each PowerPoint generator tool works. So let’s compare a few of the tools and look how they actually work:

SlideSpeak.co — Generate Presentations from Text

SlideSpeak utilizes AI to generate PowerPoints from text by allowing users to upload PDFs and Word documents. Originally they launched an AI chatbot to summarize PowerPoint files but SlideSpeak has expanded and released other AI tools in the last months. As a young company they continuously ship new innovations like productivity tools to lead in AI for presentations.

Step-by-step Guide:

Step 1: Go to https://slidespeak.co and click on “Try Now”

SlideSpeak Main Website

Step 2: Upload a PDF, Word document or paste text

Upload Word or PDF to generate PowerPoint

Step 3: SlideSpeak’s AI will analyze the text and show you a preview of your document

Step 4: Click on “Generate Presentation” in the top right corner

Step 5: SlideSpeak AI will generate a PowerPoint presentation

Step 6: Download your PowerPoint as PPTX file click on “Download PowerPoint”

The generate PowerPoint contains:

  • Relevant titles and section slides
  • Bulleted lists from the text’s key points
  • Graphs and charts if data is present
  • Professional slide formatting and themes
  • Conversational interface allows prompting the AI for specific content

The benefits

  • Saves time by automating the busywork of making slides
  • Creates a baseline presentation you can tweak vs. starting from scratch
  • Handles documents and text of any length
  • Great for quickly generating draft presentations
  • Allows for easy customization of slides within their online editor
  • Wide selection of templates and themes to choose from

The downsides:

  • AI isn’t perfect; may require cleaning up transitions or formatting
  • Limited customization compared to making a PPT manually
  • Can’t handle highly visual presentations or complex layouts well

Overall, SlideSpeak is an excellent option for creating PowerPoint decks from text quickly and efficiently. It may require some manual polishing but does the heavy lifting of analyzing text and generating an initial slide deck. For basic to intermediate presentations, it can save creators and professionals a lot of time.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft recently unveiled Copilot, an AI assistant that can create presentations and other documents (Word, …). It provides suggestions and autocompletions as users work in the Office365 apps. Copilot can help generate complete slides, notes, and outlines in PowerPoint through conversational prompts. It is considered one of the most advanced AI writing tools available today. Microsoft Copilot is gradually being rolled out, as of the writing of this article (November 1st) not all Microsoft accounts have access to it.

Step-by-step Guide:

Step 1: Head over to https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot-powerpoint and select “Try in PowerPoint”

Microsoft Copilot for Office

Step 2: Select the “Copilot” button next to the “Designer” button in the top panel

Copilot button in PowerPoint

Step 3: Click on “Create presentation from file”

“Create presentation from file” in Office Copilot

Step 6: Select a Word document

Select Word document

Step 7: Copilot will generate a PowerPoint for you

Generated PowerPoint in Copilot

Benefits of Copilot include:

  • Can handle complex layouts like research posters
  • Directly integrates in Office365

Downsides:

  • Requires Office365 subscription
  • Only supports creating presentations from docx
  • Not fully available in all countries yet
  • No chat with documents

SlidesAI.io

SlidesAI is an online presentation tool that uses AI to create presentations in Google Docs from text, PDFs, and URLs. The plugin directly lives in Google Docs which is super handy if you mainly work with the Google Suite.

Step-by-step Guide:

Step 1: Go to the SlidesAI website or install the SlidesAI add-on from the Google Workspace Marketplace.

Install SlidesAI Extension

Step 2: In Google Slides, click on the SlidesAI extension.

Open SlidesAI Google Extension

Step 3: Click “Generate Slides” in the SlidesAI sidebar

Step 4: Enter or paste your text into the text box.

Step 5: Select a presentation theme and make any customizations.

Step 6: Click “Create Slides”. SlidesAI will generate a presentation from your text.

Generated Presentation in Google Slides

Step 7: Download the presentation when complete or continue editing in Google Slides.

Benefits of SlidesAI:

  • Integrates directly into Google Slides
  • Handy text box for entering content
  • Variety of themes and customizations

Downsides:

  • Only works Google Slides with the add-on
  • Limited customization compared to manual creation
  • Exported versions may need reformatting

Use Cases

AI presentation tools are useful in many scenarios:

Students can quickly generate PowerPoint decks from essays and research papers. The AI creates outlines, summaries and basic slides they can refine for class projects. This saves time over manually building presentations from scratch.

Consultants use services like SlideSpeak to speed up client deliverables. They upload reports or proposals to instantly build decks to present findings in a professional format. This impresses clients with fast turnaround.

Research scientists can leverage Copilot’s capabilities to create presentations on technical topics complete with code snippets, charts, and diagrams. Copilot is versatile enough to handle complex scientific presentation needs.

Entrepreneurs use Slides.com to make pitch decks by uploading their business plans, investor memos, and product descriptions. The AI generates professional slides fitting VC presentation standards, saving hours of design work.

FAQ

Here are answers to some common questions about generating PowerPoints with AI:

How accurate is the AI?

The accuracy varies across tools. Most require some clean up of slide text, formatting, transitions, etc. SlideSpeak tends to require the least editing while providing good content and structure.

What about complex presentations?

Copilot can handle more complex layouts like research posters or technical presentations. The other tools are better for standard, text-based presentations.

Is there a limit to how long the text/document can be?

SlideSpeak and Slides.com can handle long-form documents and books if you want a presentation summarizing the full text. Copilot works best with summarized prompt text.

Can it really be as fast as manual creation?

It’s typically at least twice as fast in our testing. But results depend on how much customization is needed after generation. Simple presentations can be 5x faster.

Is the AI-generated presentation quality good?

The presentation quality is quite good overall across tools, although some manual refinement is likely needed. Templates and slide design in Slides.com tend to be most professionally designed.

Conclusion

AI presentation tools like SlideSpeak, Microsoft Copilot, and SlidesAI.io can save time and effort generating PowerPoint slides from text. SlideSpeak provides the best balance of automation and customization for standard presentations. Copilot handles complex layouts like research posters. And Slides.com offers pre-designed templates. Evaluate your needs to choose the right AI tool to boost your productivity and creativity when making PowerPoints.

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Kevin Goedecke

SaaS Founder, Entrepreneur, Software Enthusiast. Austin, TX <-> Berlin, Germany.