AI-generated slide decks: When are they useful?

 

in a previous post, I said that all the AI-tools for generating slide decks that I have tried are not satisfactory. This is because:

(a) these apps will not give me a slide deck which fully captures my line of thinking; in a presentation there are usually certain points that I'm driving at, and

(b) I like to use my own examples for illustration.

But I've found that if I simply need a mini presentation for introducing an idea, then such apps can be useful. The other day, I was planning for a lecture on using case studies for teacher professional development. I wanted to start the lecture by mentioning the 3 disciplines that use case studies as an established teaching method and for professional development. Then I wanted to cite one example: The Harvard Business School's use of the case method. I just needed a mini introduction to that.

I went to Canva, a wellknown app for creating visual materials, and used their new AI 'Magic Write' function to get a short presentation on the Harvard example. In less than 30 seconds, they gave me the presentation below, which exactly answered my need.

If I had to create this presentation from scratch myself, searching for the information, distilling the information into main points, creating a presentation with the main points, dealing with the slide deck design, how much time would that take me!?

My tentative conclusion: AI-tools will not give me an immediately usable custom-designed presentation for a whole lecture/lesson, but they are useful for creating short presentations for introducing an idea or topic.

(BTW, I'll be using the above slide deck tomorrow morning. After the short presentation, I will ask the teachers whether they have suspected something about the slide deck.)