You think, "Let me just have AI make the slides for tomorrow's meeting," and type "Create a proposal deck for our new service" into the chat box. A few seconds later, a whole set of plausible-looking slides appears. Except... when you actually read them, something is off.
It is all generic advice you have seen somewhere before, with nothing about your own company. Each slide is crammed with text that nobody could read if you projected it.
That "something is off" feeling is not necessarily the AI's fault. In most cases, how you write the instructions (the prompt) can make a big difference. This article walks through the prompting tips that work particularly well when asking AI to build a PowerPoint deck, with concrete prompt examples.
Why the wording of your instructions changes the result
The reason is simple: the AI knows nothing about your situation.
Put yourself in the AI's shoes when it hears "Create a proposal deck for our new service." Who is the audience? Is it a 5-minute talk or a 30-minute one? Are you trying to get a decision signed off, or just sharing information? It has no idea.
When it does not know, the AI produces "something safe that roughly fits any situation." That is exactly what the "something is off" feeling is. It is not wrong, it is just not usable as your deck.
Flip that around: the more context you give, the more specific the output becomes. There are plenty of prompting tips out there, but the one that underpins the rest is this: tell the AI the context it could not possibly know. This article starts from that idea and works through the techniques that make the biggest difference.
Also worth noting: AI tools each have their own strengths and quirks. The same prompt can produce noticeably different results, so it is worth trying a few and finding the one that suits you.
Tip 1: Hand over the context up front
The four things to give first are:
- Who the deck is for (role, level of knowledge, position)
- How long the presentation is (this effectively sets the slide count)
- What the purpose is (proposal, report, information sharing, persuasion)
- What you want the audience to do (approve it, start considering it, etc.)
Compare a weak prompt with a strong one.
Weak:
Make a proposal deck about introducing a productivity tool
Strong:
Please help me build an internal presentation deck.
- Audience: the head and manager of the accounting department (not tech-savvy)
- Length: 10 minutes (Q&A separate)
- Purpose: propose adopting an expense-reporting tool and get it onto the agenda of the next budget meeting
- Key message: our current paper-based process piles up at month end and causes overtime
Same topic, but the second one gives you a deck written in plain language for a non-technical audience, sized for 10 minutes, and aimed at getting to the budget meeting. This is the single highest-impact tip.
Tip 2: Get the outline first, not the slides
A common mistake is asking for the entire deck right away.
If you have it build everything at once, a wrong direction means redoing the whole thing. And once something that looks finished appears, it is easy to shrug and go, "eh, good enough."
So ask for the outline only first.
For now, just give me a proposed structure. For each slide, the title plus one line on what it should convey. Eight slides maximum. No body text yet.
Look at the outline, fix things like "slides 3 and 4 read better in the other order" or "we are missing the cost angle," and only then have it fill in the content. Just changing the order of operations cuts down enormously on rework.
Tip 3: One message per slide, enforced with numbers
Left alone, AI will cram in information. It means well, but the result is unreadable when projected.
The fix is to state "one message per slide" explicitly and to specify character limits as numbers.
Please follow "one message per slide."
- No more than 3 bullets per slide
- Each bullet under 30 characters
- Slide titles under 20 characters
Vague instructions like "keep it concise" leave the AI's definition of concise and yours out of sync. Pin it down with numbers and you get much closer to the granularity you asked for.
Don't expect the counts to land exactly, though. AI processes text in units called tokens rather than characters, and it has no internal character counter — so "under 30 characters" will sometimes run over. It still lands far closer to your target than "keep it concise" ever will, so the instruction is worth giving. Just plan on doing the final trimming yourself.
Tip 4: Specify the slide layout and the output format
Telling it the layout pattern makes life easier when you pour the text into PowerPoint later.
Use a consistent "title + 3 bullets" layout for every slide. For comparison slides only, use a two-column table: current state on the left, after adoption on the right.
Specifying the output format too will cut down your copy-paste work downstream.
Output in Markdown, separating each slide with
---. For each slide, write in this order: slide number / title / bullets / speaker notes.
Tip 5: Have it write what you will say, too
The number one reason slides get wordy is that people try to write everything they plan to say onto the slide itself. Having the AI produce speaker notes as a separate block solves this in one move.
For each slide, add speaker notes of about 150 characters in a conversational tone. Keep only the conclusion on the slide itself, and push reasoning and supporting detail into the notes.
This naturally pushes you toward the ideal shape: short slides, detail delivered verbally. As a bonus, you end up with a script you can rehearse from.
Tip 6: Say what you do NOT want, too
Negative instructions are surprisingly effective. Things a human would pick up from context have to be spelled out for an AI.
Please avoid the following:
- Jargon and loanwords (if you must use one, add a short explanation)
- Abstract pep-talk language like "changing mindsets" or "synergy"
- Assertions without numerical backing (e.g. "this will dramatically reduce costs")
"No unsupported assertions" is especially worth including. AI likes to sprinkle in plausible-sounding figures, so head that off in advance.
A copy-paste template
Here is everything above rolled into one template. Swap the bracketed parts for your own situation.
Please help me put together the structure of a presentation deck.
[Context]
- Audience: (role / level of knowledge)
- Length: (X minutes)
- Purpose: (proposal / report / information sharing, etc.)
- Goal: (what I want the audience to do)
- Material: (information, problems and data I have on hand)
[Rules]
- One message per slide
- Max 3 bullets, each under 30 characters
- Slide titles under 20 characters
- Avoid jargon; if used, add a short explanation
- No unsupported assertions
[Output format]
- Markdown, each slide separated by
---- Add speaker notes of about 150 characters per slide
Start with the outline only (each slide's title plus a one-line description). I will give the go-ahead before you write the body.
Do not try to nail it in one shot
Not trying to finish in a single pass is, counterintuitively, the fastest route. When something in the output bothers you, do not start over — fix it piece by piece.
Slide 3 is too abstract. Rewrite it using a concrete example of the workflow. Leave the other slides as they are.
Adding "leave the rest as they are" is the trick. Without it, parts you were happy with sometimes get rewritten too.
Finally: always check the output yourself
For all its convenience, there are three things to watch out for.
1. Verify facts and data yourself AI can write things that sound plausible but are wrong. If figures or examples appear, check the sources yourself rather than using them as-is.
2. Do not enter confidential information Unreleased revenue figures, customer personal data, internal-only documents — as a rule, keep them out. Some companies have policies governing AI use at work, so check yours first. Even swapping in dummy data or generalized wording will still get you a genuinely useful outline.
3. The final responsibility is yours The worst outcome is presenting AI output verbatim and being unable to answer a question about it. Think of it as "a partner that produces a first draft fast," and make sure you understand the content in your own words.
That said, building a deck from a blank page and editing a draft are worlds apart in terms of effort. Start with just two of these — hand over the context, and get the outline first — and try them on your next deck.
