AI presentation tools promise to save time. But the real question isn't "can AI create slides?"- it's "how much work is left after AI generates them?"

That depends on two things:

1. Quality of first draft: How close is the initial output to what you actually need?

2. Ease of iteration: How fast can you go from first draft to final presentation?

The best AI presentation tool minimizes both.

To find which tools actually deliver, we tested the four most popular AI presentation makers - Alai, Gamma, Beautiful AI, and Gemini Canvas on these exact criteria.

First Draft Quality: How All Four Tools Compare

Alai:

Compared to the other 3, Alai is able to create the best first draft, here’s why

1. Multiple Layout Variations

While creating the first draft, Alai offers four different options for each slide with different layouts, visual approaches, and content structure.

Users can preview and select their preferred version, creating a first draft that’s closer to their final vision.

Alai generates 4 different layouts per slide, enabling users to have control on what the first draft looks like

2. Presentation Focused Content Structuring

Unlike other tools that simply paste content into slides, Alai first gathers instructions on tone, intent, length, and focus.

Then, its AI (that’s trained to create presentation specific content) uses these parameters to structure content, resulting in a first draft that's already concise and aligned with presentation goals.

Alai allows users to guide AI on how to use their content by choosing tone, length, focus & intent

3. Presentation Specific Design Elements

When it comes to design, most AI presentation tools use:

1. Layouts and elements that look flat and dated,

2. Rigid templates that don’t match the content

This leads to first drafts with low visual quality that require multiple content and design iterations.

Alai fixes this with:

1. Modern CSS and advanced colour theory that creates rich, layered, and professional designs for each slide.

2. Presentation specific elements like Compare Two and Feature Matrix that most presentation tools lack.

3. Dynamic layouts that allow users to customize each slide with multiple elements or sub-sections both manually and with AI. For example, this slide uses two design elements (circular process and metrics) to convey the entire content.

Gamma:

While Gamma might have perfected fast creation, its first drafts fall behind on quality, here’s why:

1. Single Draft, No Layout Options

Gamma generates one first draft for each slide. If the initial layout doesn't match your vision, you'll need to manually restructure each slide rather than choosing from alternative options.

2. Limited Content Customization Controls

Gamma provides generic content customization to create the first draft. You can choose what you want to do with your content but the lack of specific controls around tone, intent, and focus lead to a first draft that requires substantial manual editing.

3. Design That’s Not Meant For Presentations

Gamma is a design tool for documents, web pages, and presentations. In order to support all formats it uses Notion-styled design blocks rather than presentation specific design layouts.

This leads to presentations that:

1. Have slides in wrong dimensions (not standard 16:9), requiring manual resizing

2. Use the same notion styled blocks that are used in documents and websites, resulting in slides that look flat and lack customization controls

This leads to a first draft that requires resizing and design iteration.

Gamma's Notion-style multi-format elements work better for documents than polished presentations

Compare Gamma with Alai.

Beautiful AI:

Beautiful AI promises template variety, but here's why its first drafts fall short:

1. Single Draft, No Layout Alternatives

Just like Gamma, Beautiful AI generates one first draft per presentation with a predetermined template structure. You get a single interpretation of your content with no ability to preview alternative layouts or design approaches.

2. Zero Content Customization Controls

Apart from adding additional context via a doc, text or link - Beautiful AI offers no control over how the AI structures and presents your content in the first draft. Additionally, its AI lacks presentation context leading to content that’s not structured for slides.

For example this Beautiful AI slide could have been customized to include shorter sentences and lesser text.

3. Dated Design Layouts

Unlike Alai's presentation-specific design with modern CSS and dynamic layouts, Beautiful AI uses old pre-existing templates that require multiple rounds of design iteration to visually reach anywhere near the final draft.

Beautiful AI designs often end up looking flat and basic - requiring manual design iteration

Compare Beautiful AI with Alai.

Gemini Canvas:

Gemini Canvas's first drafts require the most manual refinement, here's why

1. Single Draft, No Design Variations

Gemini Canvas also generates only one variant per slide. You get a single layout interpretation with no ability to preview alternative designs or structural approaches.

2. No Control Over Output

Gemini Canvas works on chat-based prompts to design presentations. It offers no content or design controls with output dependent completely on how detailed your prompt is.

3. Basic Template Design

Gemini Canvas’s design is entirely dependent on the user’s ability to instruct the AI. Without proper instructions on font, colour combinations, and layout, the AI creates first drafts with basic elements similar to 2015 PowerPoint templates.

Example: As seen below, when given content with zero design context, the AI creates basic text-only slides which can become boring and repetitive.

Ease Of Iteration: How All Four Tools Compare

Alai:

Here's what makes iteration easier in Alai:

1. Change Exactly What You Need

Alai provides independent controls to adjust content and design through:

• Source Content: Enables you to change the content of any slide while instructing AI on tone, focus and length. In case of quick changes around length and format, you can use the AI rewrite option.

• Change Slide Layout: Enables you to instruct AI and change the entire layout of the slide without changing content. Additionally, Convert allows you to instantly switch elements within a slide (eg - change text boxes into timelines)

These independent features not only make iteration easier but also prevent the common problem of making one edit and accidentally breaking something else on the slide.

2. Create Complex Layouts To Match Content

Alai allows you to add multiple elements in one slide or increase sections per element in order to fit your content better.

Additionally, each element is highly customizable - you can adjust spacing, text formatting, visuals, alignment of sub-elements and more. This means the same element can be edited to work across different contexts without looking repetitive.

3. Use Context-Aware AI Refinement

When you ask Alai to rewrite content, you can ensure that the AI rewrites keeping in mind the content of the entire deck not just the current slide

This means, if an earlier slide mentions something like “GCP Sprint” or “LTV Pilot,” Alai already understands what it means and keeps your message consistent instead of changing it out of context

Gamma:

When compared to Alai, Gamma’s iteration capabilities lack control and flexibility, here’s why:

1. Chat-Based Iteration Lacks Precision

You can iterate using Gamma's chat interface, but there are no dedicated AI controls meant to specifically edit design or content. This gives users less control over what might change when you make a request

Example: Ask to "make the text shorter" and the AI might also change your layout or adjust elements you didn't want touched.

2. Lack Of Flexibility In Design Iteration

While Gamma offers AI Layouts, Smart Layouts and Smart Diagrams that enable you to add specific layouts and elements to a slide, it lacks the following:

1. No option to directly switch from one element to another (unless you prompt AI)

2. Element specific customization is limited to addition and deletion of sections and changing colour — no customization on spacing, positioning, text format and more.

Compare Gamma with Alai.

Beautiful AI:

Beautiful AI makes manual iteration on PowerPoint seem easier, here’s why

1. Hard To Edit Design Elements

Beautiful AI’s lack of design control makes it super hard to add or change elements. Want to add a circular process diagram to a slide with text boxes? Rather than a simple drag and drop, you would have to manually arrange each element within the slide to ensure both can be incorporated.

Additionally, due to its high dependency on pre-existing templates, most layouts don’t allow addition of new elements or sub-sections.

Beautiful AI makes it difficult for users to change layouts, as seen above if you add a new element it places it directly on top of existing content requiring manual alignment.

2. Minimal AI Iteration Capabilities

After the first draft, Beautiful AI’s AI iteration capabilities are limited to the following:

• Design: Smart slides allows you to switch slides from one layout to another

• Content: Allows you to generate new content or edit existing ones using quick rewrite options

Apart from this, Beautiful AI offers no AI chat agents or task-specific AI controls like the other tools.

Compare Beautiful AI with Alai.

Gemini Canvas:

Gemini’s iteration capabilities are non-existent, here’s why:

1. No Direct Edit Controls

Gemini itself has zero iteration capabilities:

• No drag-and-drop functionality

• No element or content specific controls

• No way to click and edit design or content on slides

Every single edit requires typing detailed text prompts or importing to Google Slides to make manual edits.

2. High Dependency on Google Slides

The only way to get actual control is to export to Google Slides and manually edit everything or spend hours making specific iterations using chat-based prompts.

Still confused? Read about the pros and cons of using Gemini as an AI presentation tool

Final Recommendation: Which Tool Makes Presentation Creation Quicker?

First draft quality and iteration ease determine how much time you actually save with AI presentation tools. Alai wins on both parameters:

• 4 layout options per slide mean you start closer to your final vision

• Guided content structuring creates presentation-ready text in the first go

• Dynamic layouts and presentation specific design principles ensure each slide looks professionally designed without hours of effort

• Independent design and content controls make refinement predictable and fast

Learn more about how Alai stands out from other presentation tools

Start Testing With Your Real Content

Don't choose based on descriptions. Test with actual presentations:

1. Use your real content (not demo topics)

2. Create the same presentation in 2-3 tools

3. Export and test workflow compatibility

4. Compare each on the 4 primary criteria - Design, Content, Usability & Price

Most users identify their preferred tool after creating 2-3 presentations.

Get started: Try Alai

FAQs

Which AI presentation tool is fastest?

When considering the entire process, Alai due to its high quality first drafts and advanced iteration capabilities.

How long does it take to create presentations with AI?

With most tools the process from first draft to final draft can take 10+ hours, with Alai’s advanced iteration capabilities - final drafts can be created within 5-6 hours.

Which tool creates the best-looking presentations?

Alai - because it's the only tool with:

1. Dynamic layouts that customize to match content

2. Modern CSS and advanced colour theory for rich, layered designs

3. Presentation-specific design principles (not document or multi-format compromises)

Does Alai offer a free trial?

Yes, Alai allows users to test the product for free by using 200 AI credits.