I spent days testing Microsoft Copilot to generate professional pitch decks. Scroll down for my honest review covering the correct usage, samples of the output, and alternative ways to get better powerpoint presentations.

How to use Microsoft Copilot?

Microsoft has at least 3 different implementations of the product and so it’s really confusing which one to use:

1. Sparkles icon inside Powerpoint: This has a character limit of 2000 characters (300-350 words) and so doesn’t really work for a real presentation unless you’re generating decks using 1 line prompts

   
   

2. Microsoft Frontier agent https://stride.microsoft.com/: This looks experimental as there’s no way to download the presentation as Powerpoint or edit anything. It shows the HTML code and preview of every slide. Seems like an experimental product which is not really useable yet.

   
   

3. Chat on https://m365.cloud.microsoft/chat. This is the main product that they recently launched where you can reference any existing doc and generate presentations. Here if you just say “Generate a presentation for…” it usually works, but sometimes you may have to message multiple times for it to actually generate the deck.

My first experiment

I used this content to generate a presentation for a startup called Storynest.

Here’s the deck that Microsoft generated:

StoryNest_Pitch_Deck.pptx

Here’s the first draft that Alai generated for the same content:

https://app.getalai.com/view/heOWokQmRqatTUeTd8DACw

As you can see that the Alai deck is a lot more superior in quality as compared to Powerpoint.

Observations

1. It used the same layout for all the content slides with a random stock image on the left and a textbox on the right.

2. There is no way to iterate with AI. I asked it to use a quadrant diagram to compare my startup, Storynest against other options (see screenshot below) and Copilot just created a quadrant using markdown within chat itself without changing the slide at all.

   

3. It used generic content just to maintain its fixed layout. This is true across slides where the AI ignored key points from the raw content.

   

4. Design suggestions are static: It keeps the layout and content mostly the same but shows options with image on the left or right and some changes to padding. Ideally here, I would have liked to see more interesting variations in terms of elements used or diagrams to present the same content in different ways.

5. Since powerpoint is absolutely positioning elements, it cannot create diagrams at all. Here’s what happened when I asked it to generate a quadrant for the competition comparison slide:

   
   

   

More examples:

Here’s another example for a different company, Cleairo:

Cleairo_Pitch_Deck.pptx

Here’s the Alai deck for comparison:

https://app.getalai.com/view/WzKe4S3KTMeF2Q33WZypgA

The powerpoint deck has the same problems as listed above where the AI is using the exact same fixed layout and trying to fit the content into it.

The 2 decks were created from the same raw content but the quality of deck generated on Alai vs Powerpoint is very different. The Alai deck looks polished with varied layouts and modern design in contrast to Powerpoint which is basically giving a starter template and no tools for iteration.

Conclusion

Microsoft Powerpoint is lagging behind existing AI presentation softwares by a lot. The big reasons for this are:

1. Repetitive layouts: In fact, its always just using the same layout. The right layout makes a big difference in how effectively the message can land. Alai’s first draft is using feature matrices, comparison charts, sections, tags etc. These really help the reader focus on what’s important.

   
   

2. Below average design: Powerpoint is still using its basic templates with no real innovation. If you compare this Alai, the design looks fresh and polished because of shadows, blurs, multi-color patterns, etc

   
   

3. No focus on content: Powerpoint completely ignores the content in order to satisfy its layouts. It uses generic images and sometimes just adds instructions on the slide for the user to follow. At best, it gives the user a template to fill.

   
   

4. No iteration tools: Once the presentation is generated, Microsoft doesn’t provide easy tools to iterate on the deck using AI. Unlike Alai, powerpoint doesn’t use any building blocks and so the user is left to manually fix positions, alignments, spacing for everything. The powerpoint sidebar is underwhelming as it doesn’t follow instructions most of the time.

An easier and much faster way to create polished presentations is still to use a dedicated AI presentation tool like Alai. If you still need to present in powerpoint then simply use the “Export to Powerpoint” button and get the PPT file instantly.

Try Alai for free →