Strengths and Limits of AI Presentations

You just created your first AI presentation. Now let's look more closely — not to criticize, but to understand. What is AI good at in presentations? Where does it reach its limits?

The Template Factory

Imagine you had a factory that manufactures designs in seconds. An enormous factory with millions of design patterns in its memory. This factory knows hundreds of design principles: contrast, hierarchy, color theory, typography.

When you tell the factory, "Give me a design for a business presentation," it draws on its experience and combines proven patterns. It knows what "professional" means, which colors convey trust, how to make text readable.

That's AI presentation: a template factory that assembles a design based on your description. And this factory is damn good at it — but only under certain conditions.

Three Major Strengths

1. Structure and Consistency

The greatest strength of AI presentations is structural consistency. If you tell the AI, "5 slides, each with title, main point, and image," it will execute that with robotic precision. No crooked layouts. No inconsistent font sizes.

This is a real problem with human designers — sometimes slides become uneven. The AI? They're always uniform. That's a strength when you need consistency.

And consistency isn't trivial. It's a big part of what looks professional. The AI understands this and delivers it.

2. Visual Consistency and Speed

A designer used to need 3-5 days to design 20 slides. The AI does it in 90 seconds. That's not just faster — it changes how you work.

With traditional design, you couldn't afford 3-5 versions. With AI? You make 10 versions. You experiment. You iterate. You refine.

And visual consistency across 20 slides? The AI does it flawlessly. Colors match, fonts match, icons fit together. That's professional — it looks like you had a "big budget."

3. User-Friendliness for Beginners

The greatest practical strength: The AI doesn't need designer input. You don't need to understand color theory, typography, or composition. You say what you want to show, and the AI takes care of the rest.

That's a democratization of design. An engineer, a salesperson, a teacher — anyone can now create presentations that look "designed." That wasn't possible before.

Three Persistent Weaknesses

But every strength has a price. AI presentations also have real limits.

1. Generic Aesthetics

The AI is, at its core, a pattern imitator. It has thousands of design templates in its memory — and it combines them. The problem: in the end, all AI presentations look "similar."

You recognize this quickly: there's a certain "AI feel." The colors are too smooth, the layouts too perfect, the images too generic. It feels like it's from a factory — because it is.

A good designer would say, "That needs character. That needs something unexpected." The AI struggles with this. It works with known patterns, not bold innovations.

2. False Weightings with Complex Content

The AI is good at visualizing simple content. "One point per slide" works wonderfully.

But when it gets more complex — when one slide needs to connect three ideas, or when a visualization needs to show multiple concepts simultaneously — the AI loses track. It doesn't know what's really important.

Example: A slide should show how three factors relate. The AI might display the three factors with equally large icons — but maybe factor 1 is three times as important as the others. The AI doesn't know this context.

An experienced designer would think, "Factor 1 needs 60% of the space, the others 20% each." The AI does "33% each" — because that looks symmetrical.

3. Missing Storytelling

This is the deepest limit. A truly great presentation is a story. It has buildup. It has turning points. It has emotional moments.

The AI can do visual design, but not narration. It can't decide, "This slide is a cliffhanger. The next is the reveal." It can't think, "Here I show a problem, there a solution, now a real example."

The AI doesn't tell a story. It decorates.

Three Reality-Check Questions

When you see an AI presentation, ask yourself:

1. Is the storytelling self-contained — or just a collection of slides?

If you randomly shuffled the slide order, would you notice the difference? Or would it work the same way? The best presentations have internal logic. AI presentations often don't.

2. Are the visual choices deliberate — or just following templates?

Why is this slide red and the next one blue? Because there's a reason — or because the AI picked a template that fits? The best designs have logic behind every element.

3. Does the presentation speak to my audience — or to a generic audience?

A great presentation feels crafted. It knows who it's made for. AI presentations are often too universal — they speak to "everyone" and thus "no one."

The Multiplier-Enabler-Boundaries Structure

Remember K01, K02, K03, K04, K05, K06? Each medium had three roles. So do presentations.

The Multiplier Role

AI multiplies the productivity of presentation creation. What used to take days now takes minutes. That's incredibly valuable for rapid iteration, for prototyping, for experiments.

A salesperson can now make 10 versions of a pitch deck, each for different audiences. That would have been impossible before.

The Enabler Role

AI enables non-designers to make professionally-looking presentations. That's a real empowerment. A doctor can now design her medical conference presentation herself. A startup founder can make his investor pitch visually elegant.

That gives people power who were powerless before.

The Boundaries Role

But the AI can't create culture. It can't develop a message that's so bold or creative that it fascinates. It can't design "rebelliously." It can't tell a complex emotional journey.

That's the work of a master. That's human.

A Thought to Take Away

The best AI presentation is one where you as a human still own the artistic core. The AI provides the infrastructure. You provide the soul.

This means: let the AI work for structure and consistency. But be careful with storytelling and emotional core. There you need to think. There you decide what really matters.

If you understand this, you won't be manipulated by the AI. You use it.