Microsoft adds new PowerPoint features that uses artificial intelligence to make you a better presenter - and keep you on-brand at all times
Justin Sullivan / Getty ImagesMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella
- On Tuesday, Microsoft announced four new AI-powered features for PowerPoint.
- PowerPoint Designer will help users automatically generate slides that fit the company's brand, give theme recommendations, and make measurements more understandable.
- PowerPoint also launched a Presenter Coach for its web application that can give suggestions when a person is practicing a presentation.
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With just a few clicks, people can now create PowerPoint slides for their company without having to spend time designing them. In fact, with these updates, users can even get guidance on how to present their slides.
Back in 2015, Microsoft first launched PowerPoint Designer, which automatically suggests several possible slide designs, as suggested by artificial intelligence. Microsoft says that users have picked over a billion of these Designer-generated PowerPoint slides, and estimates that this has saved 500 million minutes for customers.
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced four new AI-based features for PowerPoint. Now, PowerPoint Designer will not only give design recommendations, it can help companies stay on-brand by incorporating branded templates and corporate branding guidelines. If a slide at your company always has to be black-and-gold with a logo in the lower-right-hand corner, PowerPoint will be able to help automatically keep you to those guidelines.
PowerPoint Designer can also now give theme recommendations that include relevant photos, theme styles, and colors that customers can use.
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And then, it has a feature that helps make measurements on a presentation more understandable. For example, if a user types "The size of Afghanistan, which is 652,232 km²," PowerPoint can automatically add "about equal to the size of Texas" to make the numbers more relatable to presenters and their audience.
Finally, PowerPoint launched a Presenter Coach for its web application. Users can turn on rehearsal mode and practice presenting their PowerPoint. Using your computer's microphone, PowerPoint will listen to you give your presentation and offer guidance about pacing, filler words, and better ways to word a sentence. It will even let users know if they are just reading off the slide.