5 Tools to Summarize PowerPoint Presentations with AI
It’s not easy to figure out how to summarize a PowerPoint presentation. AI and ChatGPT have changed the ways we work and consume information. ChatGPT can already write summaries for known topics based on all the information it has available. But what if you need a summary for a PowerPoint presentation? The ability to extract information and summarize long, complex presentations into digestible summaries is super valuable.
UPDATE November 2023: ChatGPT now officially supports uploading PowerPoint, PDF and other files. Note: This feature is only available on ChatGPT Plus at $20/m. At DevDay OpenAI also announced the launch of the GPT Store. This allows you to install custom GPTs directly in ChatGPT. Think of it as the app store for ChatGPT and AI.
Here’s a few use-cases:
- For Students: Easily summarize PowerPoint presentations from a lecture. Revise material and prepare more efficiently for exams.
- For Researchers: Researchers can easily summarize essential points of complex presentations with just a few clicks.
- For Consultants: Consultants can get an executive summary of lengthy client presentations or proposals. Or even better: What if you’ve previously prepared a presentation and can’t remember which presentation a certain proposal was.
- For Business professionals: Professionals can easily recap conference slides.
These are just a few examples; the list of use-cases goes on. AI and ChatGPT have made the process of summarizing content and presentations super accessible. In this blog post, we will dig into 5 AI tools that can summarize PowerPoint presentations with AI.
1. SlideSpeak.co: Summarize PowerPoint slides with ChatGPT
SlideSpeak.co is a new tool designed to revolutionize the way we summarize PowerPoint presentations. Built on the robust framework Llama Index by Jerry Liu, this tool leverages the power of ChatGPT. Since the tool is powered by ChatGPT directly you can expect similar quality in terms of the results of the summaries. SlideSpeak is extremely fast once you’ve uploaded your PowerPoint files. Questions are answered in a chat that looks quite similar to what you’re used to from ChatGPT.
SlideSpeak doesn’t only allow you to summarize PowerPoint presentations but also ask questions about it. Once you upload your presentation on the website, SlideSpeak processes the file. The processing time depends on the size of the presentation. After processing, you’re presented with an interactive chatbot interface. Here, you can ask it to perform tasks such as “Summarize this presentation for me” or “Can you write me a 3 sentence summary for slide 1 to 3 of this PowerPoint file”.
A special note here: What sets SlideSpeak apart is its capability to analyze images in PowerPoint presentations. This allows it to include relevant information from visuals into the summary, offering a comprehensive understanding of the content.
The tool is open-source, you can access its code here. Currently free to use, SlideSpeak provides a great and budget-friendly way to summarize PowerPoint presentations.
Here the website: https://slidespeak.co
And the GitHub repo: https://github.com/slidespeak/slidespeak-backend/
2. ChatGPT: Copy & Paste your PowerPoint content
ChatGPT, with its capability to comprehend and summarize text, can be a super tool for summarizing a PowerPoint presentation. ChatGPT now supports uploading PDF, PowerPoint and Word documents. This feature is only available on ChatGPT Plus. To summarize a presentation on the free version you manually need to copy the text from the slides into the chat box directly in ChatGPT. It’s crucial to include all relevant text, such as bullet points, captions, and explanatory paragraphs. This helps to make sure the summary captures all important information.
When you paste the content, you can instruct ChatGPT to summarize the pasted text. Be specific with your request. For instance, you could say:
“Summarize the above content from a PowerPoint presentation in 200 words”
OR
“Provide a bullet-point summary of the provided text from PowerPoint file.”
ChatGPT will then analyze the input and produce a summary based on the command given. It will focus on key details and themes, synthesizing the information into a more digestible format. Always review the summary to ensure it encapsulates all critical details and offers a coherent overview of your PowerPoint presentation.
This is a bit of a manual process to copy and paste the content, you can rest assured that ChatGPT will produce accurate results. ChatGPT is a sophisticated language model that can effectively create a summary of most content including PowerPoint presentations. It requires a bit more effort than approach #1 SlideSpeak.
Here’s a quick step-by-step guide:
For ChatGPT Free Users:
Step 1: Open your PowerPoint file, copy the text from each slide, and paste it into the ChatGPT interface.
Alternative option: Use a converter like PowerPoint to TXT to convert it to text: https://www.zamzar.com/convert/ppt-to-txt/
Step 2: Copy all the text into ChatGPT.
Step 3: At the end of the input add a prompt like “Summarize the above content out of a powerpoint presentation for me in 2 paragraphs or more”.
For ChatGPT Plus Users:
We would recommend you to use a specialized GPT to summarize PowerPoint files.
Step 1: Open Presentation GPT in ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-4fGuYnJC6-presentation-gpt
Step 2: Upload your PowerPoint file
Step 3: Prompt ChatGPT to summarize the presentation for you
3. Microsoft Copilot: The AI assistant from Microsoft
Microsoft… well what can we say about Microsoft. Ever since the launch of ChatGPT, Microsoft has been hyped up as the rockstar between tech giants. Its investment in OpenAI and thus ChatGPT have set it apart from Google and Apple. The Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint are still the most popular tools by a landslide.
So it was no surprise when Microsoft announced Microsoft Copilot (https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/) a few months ago. Microsoft Copilot is designed to assist in creating Word documents and PowerPoint presentations using simple AI commands.
Microsoft 365 Copilot, the AI-powered work assistant uses AI to convert your inputs into productive outcomes. It integrates directly with Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more to enhance productivity. It also introduces a new feature, Business Chat, that uses your data — including calendars, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts — to execute tasks based on natural language prompts. For instance, you can instruct Copilot to inform your team about updates to a product strategy, and it will generate a status update using information from your recent meetings, emails, and chat threads. As a user, you retain full control, deciding what to keep, modify, or discard.
While it currently doesn’t offer a feature to summarize PowerPoint presentations, it’s not hard to imagine this functionality being added in the future. For now, you can use it to give instructions like:
“Add a slide with pros and cons about the environmental impact discussed on Slide 3”
This gives you an excellent way to generate new content.
Microsoft Copilot’s existing capabilities and Microsoft’s historical dedication to improving their products suggest that it will likely evolve into an all-in-one tool, incorporating summary generation in the near future.
4. PDF Summarizing Tools: PDF.ai and BrainyPDF.com
Another approach to generate a summary for PowerPoint presentations involves converting the PowerPoint presentation to a PDF and then using PDF summarizing tools. PDF.ai and BrainyPDF.com are two such tools that offer this service.
Here’s the step-by-step guide:
First you need to save the PowerPoint file as a PDF. To do so follow the following steps:
Step 1: Open your PowerPoint presentation.
Step 2: Click on the “File” tab in the top-left corner of the PowerPoint window.
Step 3: In the drop-down menu, click on “Save As”.
Step 4: In the dialog box that appears, choose the location where you want to save your file.
Step 5: In the “Save as type” drop-down box, select “PDF (*.pdf)”.
Step 6: Upload the PDF file to either PDF.ai or BrainyPDF.com.
Use the summarizing feature of the selected tool to get a concise summary.
While this method involves an extra step of converting the file type, it opens up a plethora of PDF-specific tools that can be utilized to generate an effective summary.
Summary
In conclusion, while there are several methods to generate a summary of PowerPoint presentations, SlideSpeak.co stands out for its intuitive interface and comprehensive AI analysis. Whether you’re a student, a researcher, or a business professional, summarizing your PowerPoint presentations with AI is an efficient and effective way to digest information quickly. Harness the power of AI to summarize PowerPoint presentations and turn information overload into manageable insights.
