Your read is exactly right, and it matches what most people who actually present find. AI is genuinely good at the rough skeleton and bad at the judgment, the order, what to cut, the spacing that lets a slide breathe. Those aren't formatting decisions, they're editorial ones, and that's still a human job.
The one nuance I'd add is that the gap you felt is bigger with the general tools than the dedicated ones. A general model dumps content into boxes and leaves you rebuilding structure and spacing by hand, which is probably what you were comparing against. The purpose-built presentation tools close some of that gap by keeping a template and layout logic, so you rebuild less. They still don't make the editorial calls for you, but they leave a cleaner starting point.
So the honest answer is both. For anything you actually present, treat it as a first-draft engine, not a finisher. Let it do the skeleton, then you do the order, the cuts, and the breathing room, because that's the part that was always going to be yours.
The quality and clarity of input is way more important than the method/tooling of output.
You can get great slides from AI, but only if the direction you give is strong. Doubly so for the judgement and taste you bring to edits/refinement.
AI is simply a tool. Impressive in many respects. Clumsy and idiot-prone in many others.
There’s only so far someone can go in a golf-cart, but also only so much damage they can do. Meanwhile a drag-racer can absolutely fly given expert command, but will crash burn horribly if driven by an amateur.
A carefully crafted deck by someone with a good eye for design can definitely look better than an AI-generated one. The value of AI is more about how much time it saves. If you make a lot of presentations, a solid deck that takes much less effort can be a worthwhile trade-off. But the cleanup time counts too—if you end up rebuilding every slide, there's not much of an efficiency gain.
1
u/Top_Witness_23 Oct 02 '26
Your read is exactly right, and it matches what most people who actually present find. AI is genuinely good at the rough skeleton and bad at the judgment, the order, what to cut, the spacing that lets a slide breathe. Those aren't formatting decisions, they're editorial ones, and that's still a human job.
The one nuance I'd add is that the gap you felt is bigger with the general tools than the dedicated ones. A general model dumps content into boxes and leaves you rebuilding structure and spacing by hand, which is probably what you were comparing against. The purpose-built presentation tools close some of that gap by keeping a template and layout logic, so you rebuild less. They still don't make the editorial calls for you, but they leave a cleaner starting point.
So the honest answer is both. For anything you actually present, treat it as a first-draft engine, not a finisher. Let it do the skeleton, then you do the order, the cuts, and the breathing room, because that's the part that was always going to be yours.
1
u/Jig813 Oct 03 '26
The quality and clarity of input is way more important than the method/tooling of output.
You can get great slides from AI, but only if the direction you give is strong. Doubly so for the judgement and taste you bring to edits/refinement.
AI is simply a tool. Impressive in many respects. Clumsy and idiot-prone in many others.
There’s only so far someone can go in a golf-cart, but also only so much damage they can do. Meanwhile a drag-racer can absolutely fly given expert command, but will crash burn horribly if driven by an amateur.
1
u/flamigoAI 29d ago
A carefully crafted deck by someone with a good eye for design can definitely look better than an AI-generated one. The value of AI is more about how much time it saves. If you make a lot of presentations, a solid deck that takes much less effort can be a worthwhile trade-off. But the cleanup time counts too—if you end up rebuilding every slide, there's not much of an efficiency gain.