Days 6 – Creating presentations
Welcome to day 6 of the 12 Days of AI.
Today we are learning about AI tools that can produce presentations for you. We will focus on Gamma but there are several alternatives also listed.
What is Gamma?
Gamma is a web-based tool that enables users to create and present content with minimal formatting and design skills. Users can choose from customizable templates and create slides for presentations. Gamma’s privacy policy.
How do I access it?
Create an account. We’ve listed other alternatives below.
Help with Gamma
Gamma provides further guidance on how to edit and import presentations.
Your task:
Here is an example of a presentation created by Gamma on the History of Christmas Baubles. Your task is to create a presentation in Gamma on one of these topics:
- A seasonal holiday of your choice
- Your favourite winter meal (or summer for those down south!)
- Your New Year’s resolutions
- A history of Christmas traditions
- Or a topic of your own choosing!
Alternatives to Gamma:
Join the conversation:
Post the link to your Gamma presentation in the comments or on X using #12doAI. If you don’t use X, what social platforms do you use to connect with others professionally?
- How did you get on with the task – did you find it useful?
- How easy was it to create a presentation and edit it?
- Could you imagine using one of these tools to create your own presentations?
- Did you try using it to create a presentation on a topic you know a lot about – how accurate was it?
- Would you recommend these tools to your students? If not, why not?
Do you want to win a prize?
Enter the competition and you could min a mini robot!
As a graphic designer I would NEVER use this for making presentations. For someone with no visual skills whatsoever I can see how it could be useful, but the results are visually bland and the selection of images is very limited. None of the design templates would be appropriate or reflect the type of content I deal with. When creating a presentation on topics I know well, the information was historically inaccurate and extremely lightweight, requiring a lot of extra editing. The only possible use for students would be in suggesting a structure. But design students should be capable of making bespoke presentations to a much better visual standard and considering the look and feel, tone of voice etc relevant to the subject matter.
As an author of content I likewise can’t imagine using this – I don’t need the AI to write the content for me. I could see more use for a tool that just does the page layout and design for me, for a meeting where I just want to present data internally and wouldn’t be using a designer anyway. But Powerpoint now has a lot of that built in now anyway!
https://gamma.app/docs/A-History-of-German-Christmas-Traditions-from-1200-2024-rvbycdf868iiwhu
I have asked Gamma to make a presentation about German Christmas traditions from the medieval – current times. It came up with the structured presentation but there is no actual information in it and photographs are cropped in weird ways. I suppose you have to pay if you want more information and a real presentation. So far it is just headlines with no content.
Very impressed with Gamma and the speed of creation.
https://gamma.app/docs/What-is-PebblePad-The-Learning-Journey-Platform-vno8iqjli7zrkix
Wow… it took all of 2 minutes to output a complete presentation on the history of the Christmas cake! Most of the information was relevant, though I expect I’d make a few changes if I wanted to present this for real.
I spent a bit of time playing with the editing tools, all of which were quite straightforward. There is a lot of linked content available to prettify your presentation – perhaps too much!
https://gamma.app/docs/The-History-of-the-Christmas-Cake-zs2y4qmr0f6jlz1
As a Textile Print Tutor I create my own presentations using Powerpoint I had never come across Gamma before.this tool was a big wow for me sorry to sound like an X factor panellist. To date most of these AI platforms haven’t really resonated with me and I proceeded with today’s task with trepidation.
I typed in my prompt ‘ how to create a textile print’ and within minutes a presentation was
generated. I wasn’t too happy with the images used I would have liked to upload my own so
the look was a tad generic and not polished enough.
https://gamma.app/public/How-to-Create-a-Textile-Design-Print-3mn8uboizhtn6t2
You can edit the images and upload your own if you hover over the image to select it, if that helps!
further to my feedback I would use this app to create presentations for delivering my courses
once I figure out how to edit the images. The accuracy was great and it was as if I had written
up the text. So the challenge for me was the visual aspect of this tool.
I really liked the speed of the design and the colour options, I included graphics in the prompts and it worked really well. I think it gives a great base to work with and would be inclined to incorporate it in my work.
I was initially impressed by the speed at which this tool created a presentation on a topic which was not mainstream but well known to me (history of a particular area in Brussels). However, upon closer inspection, the information is very general and lightweight. I don’t plan to use this tool for my teaching.
Hello everybody, not so long ago I used Gamma to create a presentation about social media for PGRs and provided the link to it in advance of the workshop while also encouraging other to create their own. This is the link to it.
https://gamma.app/docs/Social-media-for-postgraduate-research-students-go20lqg5yz5j7lq?mode=doc
I found it useful that I could edit and am still able to if I wish.
What are your thoughts?
I asked Gamma to “create a presentation on the history of ackee”, however – it didn’t provide information, just the headings along with guidelines and introductory statements. For example: Under the heading ‘Cultural Significance of Ackee’ it says: ‘Discover how ackee has become a national fruit of Jamaica and plays a central role in traditional Jamaican dishes.’ Under another it says: ‘Uncover the rich nutritional profile of ackee, including its high levels of vitamins, minerals, and dietary fibre.’ – Never actually providing the information itself, which I found interesting.
I decided to try again with a more detailed request, specifically asking Gamma to “Create a presentation on the history of ackee and provide detailed information on each of the points made.” Which then returned a presentation that was detailed and provided information that the first one didn’t. I think with this particular platform it requires a lot of specificity, and *very* detailed requests for it to work.
https://gamma.app/docs/The-Enigmatic-History-of-Ackee-g51ydiuu0b90fwi
In terms of the design options – it would have been great if the presentation slides included more images related to the topic as opposed to textured overlays that don’t back up what the text is saying.
I found Gamma, quite straightforward and easy to use, easy to edit and make changes. The source of information it gathered was from Wikipedia, despite one of the slides titled the 7 principles it only listed the first 4 I had to manually add the others which was very easy. It sometime that I will definitely consider using in the future.
https://gamma.app/docs/Kwanzaa-8bi5j2prlid6kgt
I used beautiful.ai, which I have used for more than three years, because I don’t want to create a new account for another tool. Here is the result: https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-Nl3FtpegiGJMO17xiwe, by promoting for a presentation on how to cook a festive meal for Christmas in the Japanese context.
The result was impressive by not only the speed and layout but also the content. It took the Japanese context into consideration and came up with a festive dish which is probably surprising to many people in the west – KFC fried chicken. How KFC entered the Japanese market by tweaking its recipes is a well-known case study about how to open a new market. The result I got was really great.
However, the downside would be some repetition in the last two slides. More details could have been added to the prompt to for better customisation of the output, for example, audience, purpose and context of the presentation.
I had a go at using Gamma and have to say I’m very impressed! It was easy to use and I really liked what it came up with. I first tried with one of the above suggestions, a history of Christmas traditions (https://gamma.app/public/A-History-of-Christmas-Traditions-kn36xv7lig1furo) and was so impressed I had to give it a go with a topic more specific to my role. Next I had a go at using it’s text transform tool. I uploaded an agenda for a training session I run and it pulled together a great presentation deck: https://gamma.app/public/Mahara-A-Powerful-ePortfolio-Tool-g3p1y9ppz3eiyc5. This would obviously need reviewing and adjusting accordingly but in general it did a great job. The tool seems easy to use to both create a presentation and edit it. I will definitely have a go at using this tool to create a presentation for actual use. Finally, I had a go at creating a presentation about digital skills (https://gamma.app/public/Digital-Skills-822pyrz8md0b4nn) and it was surprisingly good. The information was a little vague but it would certainly be a starting point and saves time with design, allowing more time to focus on the content itself. I’m not sure I’d recommend to students as there is a question around stifling creativity and the obvious concerns around potential plagiarism but I will 100% be recommending it to colleagues 🙂
I enjoyed using Gamma, the presentations were almost a way of teaching myself something new (I looked up scary Christmas folklore/traditions across the world – folklore being something I find interesting but have very limited knowledge on).
When playing around with the theme I found it great that there were limits on the font colour, to ensure that the slide set remained accessible. I think AI should ensure that accessibility is at its core. The Slides looked quite nice at first glance too and I can imagine that this would be useful for people who are not very interested in spending time on the visual appeal of the slides.
Despite the information being surface-level it provides a good starting point, with ideas that can be fleshed out further.
However, I also have quite a few criticisms. I tried making multiple slide sets using slightly altered prompts, whilst I was quite happy with the final set created, one of the slides in an early iteration read as if it were a brochure ‘Come and join us to celebrate X tradition…’. Additionally, the designs did not vary much between slide sets, yes, the limited selection of themes could be changed and individualised, but it seemed to always create the same standard layout between slide sets.
I also noticed a credit system, I haven’t looked into it much but realistically, if a lecturer/teacher isn’t design-orientated to begin with then would they be willing to pay for this service when plain slides will also do just fine? I think there is a lot of nuance to slide design that AI may not have the inherent creativity to capture, slide design, and all design for that matter is subjective. Guides exist for what makes a good/engaging slides, but many individuals operate outside of what these guides create and still produce engaging material.
I think these slides are only more engaging because they are ‘different’ to what we see as standard, if this becomes the norm in teaching then the slides AI such as Gamma won’t ‘stand-out’.
This turned out to be an fine example of using AI as a helper to overcome various work-related ailments: procrastination, writer’s block and a wasteful propensity to switch back-and-forth between writing and presentation tasks. Hailing from Adam Smith’s stomping ground, you’d think I could manage to divide up my labour effectively…….
I am currently updating guidance on the procurement of e-learning content. The current guidance is text-based and rather dull. Having identified a helpful acronym with which to arrange the content, I was in the no man’s land of having neither completed the content or settled on an effective way of presenting it. A perfect opportunity to use Gamma, perhaps?
On opening Gamma for the first time I opted for an extended prompt:
Create a presentation to provide advice on buying e-learning content. Use the following headers standards, content, accessibility…….etc..
I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Within seconds I had a structured presentation which was more than visually acceptable, and with credible and accurate information – albeit a little generic and repetitive.
I was then able to quickly delete some slides, change headings and replace some of the content with my own. A little more tweaking to the colours and fonts and I was happy – because I had moved quickly from 80% of the content and no real idea how to present it to something that was almost complete! So, as a subject matter expert who was struggling to present my knowledge I found this activity and service highly productive. It also provided a lot of opportunity for reflection.
Generative AI is often cited as a way to get started on a piece of written work. In this case it allowed me to (almost) finish it. I was quickly able to identify the content I wanted to keep, and that I needed to discard. Blandness and a little repletion were then main issues here, rather than accuracy. The importance of existing knowledge, experience and criticality remain key to the successful use of services such as Gamma. I would have had to spend a lot more time checking the relevance, provenance and accuracy on a topic such as Christmas baubles (Bah, humbug). Users should not be bedazzled by the bells-and-whistles and thereby forget that this is still generative AI with a shiny front-end.
Templates can lead to homogenous content, and if I was marking 200 presentations made in this way I would soon become fatigued. A counter argument to that might be that a certain uniformity affords closer analysis of the content. When the content is being assessed rather than presentation this may work well for students and markers.
Having downloaded the presentation to PowerPoint and PDF I found that there were repeated accessibility issues. In particular, alt-text was missing from the photographs and various shapes used to present the content. I was disappointed by this gap in provision, given that some AI services are reasonable adept at creating alt-text. Perhaps I should have included it in my prompt. Writing alt-text is very much context driven activity but a little assistance here would have helped to kick start it.
So, my takeaway is use this not to save time but to use time more effectively.
On the surface, I was really impressed with Gamma. But the more I experimented the less impressed I was!
This presentation on the history of lebkuchen (a favourite festive treat of mine, which I’m currently feasting on…) is all headlines ‘explore’ and ‘discover’ but with no actual information – https://gamma.app/docs/History-of-Lebkuchen-bk34mxxy8nod03h. So perhaps this kind of tool works better with generic subjects with lots of source information rather than pretty niche subjects.
What it does do well is create something to start from, which you can then manually build upon and edit, rather than starting from scratch. This totally un-festive presentation it created on korfball was pretty good as an introduction to the sport, albeit contained some incorrect information https://gamma.app/docs/Korfball-The-Exciting-World-of-Mixed-Gender-Team-Sports-lu15uja3l4bdcoo. It would be interesting to see if the tool could be used to create/present anything more than introductory, cursory content though,
Interesting way to initiate a presentation. An editable structure came up and then five slides were created quickly:
https://gamma.app/docs/Generative-AI-Tools-for-Text-Images-and-Video-x0yyorzkdrxknwr
Not sure whether I will use that tool further though; MS Powerpoint itself provides various formatting suggestions in the ‘Designer tab’, making it easier to focus on the content, as it can improve the look of the slides without spending too much time. In terms of the generated content, although Gamma is not bad, a dedicated text AI tool might produce better results.
As someone who is not a graphic designer, this tool was really intuitive and generated content really quickly, which could be great if you’re pressed for time. However, I would use it to come up with the framework and general content in a couple of minutes and then I would use my own judgement to edit and amend the content, which was quite banal. I asked it to create a review of the development of the English language over the past 1500 years and although it hit the main points, it didn’t offer much in the way of examples.
This was an interesting experiment! Most of the presentations I produce for work have to be in a branded template, so there’s more potential for me to use this to help generate presentations for purposes outside my day job. But I found the content to be extremely basic and even when I tried making my prompt more specific I couldn’t figure out how to get it to give me even a Chat GPT-level of detail. I also tried editing the proposed outline but it ignored this and put the bullet points I’d deleted for being irrelevant back in.
The slides contained more text than I would normally go for and the structure seemed a bit random but I can see it could be a good start point if I was struggling to create a topic presentation. For areas where I know the content though, I would be inclined just to use the themes in Powerpoint to give better visuals.
it worked very fast, though my topic ‘xmas number 1s’ was presented pretty blandly and with quite dull images but a start
i then used it to create a powerpoint with text (i had already written individual text slides) for a presentation that I am doing and it put it all in very quickly but omitted parts (where i would add in more context). the images used were very dull though so I would edit but could be a good time saving device when wanting to update slides
I recently used Gamma for a conference presentation. I asked it to summarise my paper into a set of slides, then I did the same thing manually. Comparing the two versions, I found I used about 75% of my own work and 25% of Gamma’s. Gamma was better at the broad statement summaries but I provided more academic detail that Gamma ignored. I played around with the AI image generator and everntually came up with an image for the title slide that wasn’t bad. The slides looked great (much better than PowerPoint template) after quite a lot of editing. I think Gamma is probably the best of this type of tool currently available.