AI for presentations
- presentations
- structuring
A deck is an argument, not a document. Most AI slide help fails for one reason: it generates paragraphs and calls them slides. The fix is to use AI where it is genuinely strong — the spine of the argument, the outline, the speaker notes — and build the slides like slides.
Slides are not prose
- One idea per slide. If a slide needs three sentences to be understood, it is a document wearing a slide costume.
- The title carries the point. “Retention is the bottleneck” is a title; “Retention” is a topic.
- Evidence lives in one visual. A chart, a diagram, two numbers. Nothing else.
- Sentences go in the notes. The slides support you; the notes are what you actually say.
The deck loop
How it works, step by step
- Brief first: who is in the room, the one decision you want from them, and the three to five things they must believe to make it.
- Outline with AI: ask for a spine of sections as claims — full sentences, not topics — matching the time you actually have.
- Stress-test the argument before design: “What would make this argument fail? Which claim is weakest?” Fix it now, cheaply.
- Speaker notes: let AI draft the sentences that go in your mouth — one short note per slide, in your register.
- Build the slides: titles are the claims, visuals are the evidence, everything else is notes. Do this part yourself.
A bad example
Ask: “Make me a 15-slide deck about our Q3.”
You get topic soup — Introduction, Overview, Key Metrics, Conclusion — with paragraphs on every slide. The audience reads ahead, you narrate your own slides, and no decision emerges.
A better example
Ask: “Audience: the exec team. Decision: approve two support hires. They must believe: backlog growth is unsustainable; temps fix it short-term only; two hires clear it by Q1. Give a ten-slide spine for a 15-minute slot where every title is a full-sentence claim, plus the single piece of evidence each claim needs.”
The output is an argument you can check slide by slide — and it is checkable before any design work begins.
Why it works
The model is a strong structuring partner and a weak visual designer. Decks live or die on their spine: an argument whose titles read as claims works even when skimmed, because the skimmer absorbs the reasoning. AI also drafts speaker notes faster than you will, and — used after the spine is fixed — notes reinforce the argument instead of wandering. Keep the build step for yourself, where taste matters; keep the outline step with AI, where structure is cheap to change.
Practice
Build the deck brief
You need a quarterly update deck for your leadership team. The goal is not “show the numbers” — it is to get a specific decision: moving budget from one channel to another. You will ask an AI assistant for the deck's spine.
Fill the four brief slots — audience and decision, the claims they must believe, the evidence each claim needs, and the constraints — then compare with the reference version.
A strong example (self-assessment — not machine-graded)
Audience and decision: the leadership team; we want approval to move 20% of the ads budget into the newsletter channel for one quarter. What they must believe: (1) newsletter engagement is growing while ads have plateaued; (2) newsletter subscribers convert roughly twice as well as ad traffic; (3) one quarter is enough to test the shift with clear success metrics. Evidence: growth claim — the six-month engagement chart; conversion claim — the cohort comparison table; test design — the proposed success criteria and stop conditions. Constraints: fifteen-minute slot, ten slides maximum, every title a full-sentence claim, no paragraphs on slides, speaker notes one short paragraph each in my register, end with the single ask slide.
Hint
The deck is an argument: the beliefs list is the argument's skeleton — write claims, not topics.
Constraints shape the output more than adjectives: time slot, slide count, title style.
Why this is the answer
A deck brief works when it names the room (audience + decision), the argument (claims they must believe), the proof (evidence per claim) and the shape (constraints). Given all four, an AI assistant produces a spine where every title is a claim and every claim has its evidence slot — a deck that can be checked before a single pixel is designed. Without the beliefs list, you get topic soup with your numbers stapled on.
Transfer
- Status updates: same loop at two-slide scale — decision, claims, evidence.
- Pitches: the “what must they believe” list is the real work; AI just formats it.
- Reviewing a colleague’s deck: check whether the titles alone tell the story.
- Speaker notes in your register: feed AI one paragraph of how you actually talk.
Key takeaways
- A deck is an argument: one claim per title, evidence per slide, sentences in the notes.
- Use AI for the spine and the notes; build the slides yourself.
- Brief the model like the room: audience, decision, beliefs, time slot.
Next
Next: Reports that hold up — the written cousin of the deck, with evidence hygiene attached. The structured output entry covers shaping model output, and action items covers the one part every deck must end with.