I tried 11 AI Presentation Generators so you don't have to.

For those that are new around here, this is weekly newsletter where I highlight new and innovative AI products that are worth exploring.

Hey hey!

Happy Friday! We’re back for another Product of the Week!

Upping The AI Product Report’s Game!

Hi All,

You spoke, and The AI Product Report listened! You’ve been clamoring for more cool product finds that were resoundingly in the PRODUCTIVITY category!

With a surge of digital products aiming to take the crown of the best in breed, Productivity is a huge category of software tools, and one that’s quite saturated as a market. Everyone’s got some edge, angle, flavor, on how they’re spinning things, but at the end of the day, effort, and time gains on a regular basis add up quite a bit. With such a broad category, I had to dig a bit to find a slice of this massive topic that would save you all some tangible time. Did you know that the average content-rich slide (from creation to “presentable”) takes a seasoned workers anywhere between about 45minutes to an hour and a bit? So that 14 slide pitch deck takes a third of a work week to put together. Don’t believe me? Here’s my source.

Luckily for us, quite a few humans have put some time to weaponizing AI for the cause of saving you time, and some of you just might find some relief by the time this article ends.

I spent well over 12 hours pouring through a huge number of contenders to get you what I found to be the best Product for ONE Productivity ick, that so many of us face regularly- some even daily. The bane of many business & technical workers alike that are stuck communicating: Presentations. After having a few chats with some old friends, and new acquaintances, this one seemed to be a burning pain for a LOT of team leads, managers, and above.

I’ve tested, analyzed, and compared 11 different tools to bring you the most competent contender so far. (Disclaimer, there are more, many many more, but I’m on a time budget here 😅). So, whether you’re a seasoned presenter or just starting out, buckle up and prepare to be amazed by what AI can do for your presentations.

THE RUBRIC - COMPARING APPLES TO APPLES

How am I supposed to evaluate a basket full of presentation applications? I need to see their savvy, and I need to know how well they can deliver on the needs of a typical presentation maker’s needs! Let's break it down. Crafting presentations usually follows a process a bit like this:

1. Topic: The big picture + an outline

2. Content & Notes: Info dumping and spotting the critical messages per slide.

3. Layout: Organizing the text and figuring out placeholders for those sweet visuals.

4. Visual Supports: Adding charts, pictures, and all the good stuff that holds non-text informational content.

5. Aesthetic Adjustments: Fine-tuning everything for maximum visual impact.

Logically, each step builds on the one before it. In our case, there was more to check:

What I was looking for in these AI heroes:

• AI Power: How deeply can they tackle each step of the presentation creation process?

• MVP Muscle: Is the "minimum viable product" already impressive?

• Tool Teamwork: Where do they position themselves in the creative flow of the average office worker? Are they replacing old reliable? (PowerPoint, Slides, Keynote) Are they integrating with them? Or are they somewhere in between? These breaks in workflow are at times jarring and unnecessary, so we want ones feel the most natural to pull into a workflow.

• Design Duos: Are the generated designs actually…usable?

• Source It Up: Can references be added quickly?

• Editability Ever After: Once the presentation is done, can it still be tweaked easily?

YOUR PRODUCTIVITY WINNER 🏆 PLUS AI!

After reviewing dozens of AI-powered products, here’s my top pick!

The arrival of Large language models bring a lot of fun new potential to SaaS as we know it. On an unrelated note, a great thing to come out of the 2010s was the sheer amount of interoperability between software, and building open platforms with a focus on data sharing. See where I’m headed yet? The ideas I’m trying to hint at is that the mindset of building attachments to open taps of data was a valid way to develop giant’s ecosystems thanks to smaller players. and it’s under that philosophy that we find Plus AI.

It promises AI Slide Generation to accelerate the starting pace, and cut into the head scratching steps that come in with brainstorming.

Holding to the classic idiom: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” this AI powered add-on for Google Slides, comes in the shape of an extension, and it delivers what the users need in a non-intrusive, no headache way. Where a large number of competitors in the space focused on creating their own flavor of a PPT generator by starting with SaaS, this one was Plus AI shaped its solution with an opposite approach: Starting where the users are, and solving the problem as close to their usual means of doing so. This is a Google Slides Extension 🙌🏽 Plus AI takes an approach to target a limited set of use cases, but delivers them masterfully. It leverages AI to suggest content, layouts, and visuals, while seamlessly integrating with a familiar tool.

Design & Usability

The interface is hard to beat, being utilitarian, understandable in plain English throughout. It was clearly developed with an understanding of its appearance in the user’s flow, a control bar within the larger nebula of options that Google Slides already offers.

What Makes It A Good Delivery?

One sentence and one click later this is what was in front of me:

That already means a lot.

To expand a bit on the value delivered, this AI tool truly delivers on its promise of saving time and creating top-notch presentations. It's like having a personal presentation assistant (minus the hourly rate!).

AI Powerhouse: This bad boy tackles most presentation steps with impressive depth. From crafting an outline based on your topic to suggesting relevant content and layouts, it's like having a mini presentation wizard on your shoulder. 🧙🏽‍♂️ Moving past that, Plus AI went the extra mile, and even included “Plus Notes”. These sweet tangents were design notes generated about the content of your slides, so on top of being a wizard on your team, it’s also your right-hand advisor!

MVP Marvel: Plus AI doesn't just spit out half-baked slides. The initial drafts are surprisingly polished which in comparison to quite a few of the competitors I tested, means that much more.

Design Dynamo: Forget cheesy clip-art and awkward layouts. Plus AI works with templates you feed it, or one from its modern, professional-looking selection. Your slides will leave your audience impressed. and the Placeholders were nearly usable in quite a few instances!

Source Savvy: Nope, none of those baked in. You have to substantiate claims yourself. but I imagine since you’re making a presentation about a subject you’re doing some research as well.

Believe it or not, there was a competitor who did not rise to the level of this one, that did, actually have this feature implemented in their solution!

Editable Extravaganza: Once you have your AI-generated masterpiece, editing is a smooth ride. You can tweak anything and everything to your heart's content.

Tech Stack

This is a Classic-extension. This is Javascript front-end interacting with a server type backend.

Sorry technical readers, I don’t have anything particularly special on this one. I valued the use case effectiveness over solution complexity! 🙇🏽‍♂️

Where AI Comes into Play

Need I say more? This is an LLM hooked up to Google Slides. I imagine that this series of prompts that are processed in the backend consider elements such as: layout, how that information could be displayed, tests for a few variants and makes a selection of which makes the most sense based on the flow of the presentation.

While this delivers on its promise, I think that Plus AI can now benefit from robustifying its value by giving more for its price point. For 25$ a month per seat, this is one of the better performing models on the market as I’ve seen, though I am curious about which businesses will shell out that much for those gains in efficiency. They’d have to put out a LOT of Slide Decks in a month to see n-sized gains beyond breakeven.

The kind of value I’m talking about is the stuff that saves us a lot of homework: e.g.

• Generating presentation notes

• Having better ability to directly cite the sources it uses in its claims

• A later, higher complexity feature that would set this player aside from the market would be a to allow it to link with designated data sources (like Data Studio, or Google Sheets, to automatically, OR conversationally outline which bits of information to be visualized)

Overall, Plus AI is a game-changer for anyone who wants to skip more of the boring stuff and focus on delivering impactful presentations without the usual time sink tied with their creation. It's innovative, user-friendly, and delivers impressive results. Highly recommend checking it out!

Install Link for the lazy: https://workspace.google.com/u/0/marketplace/app/plus_ai_for_google_slides_and_docs/214277172452

TELL ME HOW YOU REALLY FEEL ABOUT THIS ONE… 💌

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Stay well, and until next week.

-✌🏽 Sam