The "Tells" that shout "AI Made Me!"
A couple friends of mine, one of them a Microsoft MVP for PowerPoint, the other one not (probably because MS doesn't play His 'n Hers MVP Team Tag, but that's just a guess).
Taylor Croonquist & Camille Holden, proprietors of nutsandboltsspeedtraining.com
I get their email newsletter; always full of tips and techniques to make working with PowerPoint faster and more efficient. This is from one of Taylor's recent emails, reproduced here with his permission. With all our recent discussion of AI-slop, he's got some good suggestions for identifying it (and avoiding producing it!):
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Here's the thing about AI and presentations: anyone can now generate a slide that looks finished in seconds - but looking finished and being well-built are two different things.
There's a recognizable AI aesthetic taking over decks - and because it looks polished, most people never stop to notice that it breaks the basic rules of good slide design.
The good news is that once you know the tells, you can't unsee them. Three to watch for:
TELL #1 - Decoration without information. Rows of glossy gradient icons that don't map to anything specific. Quick test: cover the icons. If the slide loses nothing, they were decoration, not design.
TELL #2 - Text that could be about anything. "Unlock synergies." "Drive innovation at scale." AI-generated copy defaults to generic verbs and zero numbers. If a sentence would work equally well in a competitor's deck, it isn't saying anything in yours.
TELL #3 - Every slide has the same shape. Three evenly weighted boxes, over and over, with nothing emphasized. Real messages have hierarchy - one thing on the slide should matter more than the rest, and the design should make it obvious which one.
The fix for all three is the same discipline: know what each slide is arguing before you style it. That's messaging driving design, not the other way around.
[ Taylor then introduces Camille's webinar on the subject; among her many other talents, Camille's become an expert trainer on AI for presentations. Unfortunately for us, the webinar's long over. ]
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The webinar was part of their PowerPoint Pro membership, which also includes monthly live Q&A sessions, the Webinar Vault (40+ hours of past sessions, indexed by topic), all 5 premium courses, and more.
Official Disclaimer: I don't have any skin in this game. They didn't even ask me to post this, but I thought it might be of interest to r/powerpoint Redditors. But I've attended live and virtual classes by both Taylor and Camille; always worthwhile. Fair warning: Taylor's an InfoFirehose ... tips fly fast and furious. Great fun.