[brookst]

PowerPoint is the poster child for the class of applications that AI totally obsoletes:

* A large application whose outputs are independent of the all (people still print slides; when presenting nobody knows or cares what app was used) * Complicated and requires users to learn lots of skills unrelated to the work they’re doing (compare to Excel, where the model and calculations require and reflect domain knowledge about the data) * Practically zero value add in document / info management (compare to word where large documents benefit from structure and organization)

We’re pretty close to presentations just being image files without layers and objects and smartart and all that.

AI will come for all productivity tools, but PowerPoint will be the canary that gets snuffed first, and soon.

[HongKongPhooey]

I recall reading comments like this when PowerPoint was invented as it would kill all graphic design jobs. The absolute reverse happened. It created an entirely new industry. There is no AI today, or in the near future, that can combine human emotive story telling with impactful design, animated flow and interactivity. Yes it can create flattened boring 'documents' with no passion or depth. I for one would never want to be asked to stand in front of an audience and actually have to present a deck created by Copilot or Claude. Feast your eyes on this PowerPoint creation made by very talented real human designers and ask yourself the question "How long before AI can do this?" https://www.brightcarbon.com/portfolio/intersystems-partners...

[brookst]

Wait, how does PowerPoint do emotive storytelling in a way that a human driving an AI tool could not?

It sounds like you’re confusing my argument that AI can replace PowerPoint tools like gradient, layers, fonts, etc, with an argument I did not make that AI will take humans out of the equation.