ChatGPT is taking on Google Slides with its own presentation builder.
ChatGPT’s capabilities continue to expand, and the latest feature is a fully capable slideshow creator. Announced a few weeks ago, ChatGPT Slides lets you create PowerPoint-style decks from inside your conversations, and it’s now appearing for those on the Pro tier and above — meaning right now, you need to spend at least $100 a month to get it.
If you’re on the free ChatGPT plan or the $20-a-month Plus tier, you can still get ChatGPT to generate downloadable PowerPoint files from the content of your conversations. However, they’ll be more basic than those made in the full version of ChatGPT Slides, and there are no collaboration or native edit options.
ChatGPT Slides is part of OpenAI’s push to give users a complete office suite inside the ChatGPT apps. Pages (the word processor) is already available for Pro tiers and above, while a spreadsheet app is on the way — the idea being that you will soon be able to get all your work done without any help from Google or Microsoft.
While ChatGPT Slides is only available on pricier plans right now, it’s likely to come to lower subscription tiers in the future. But for now, how does the tool compare to what’s available in the free and Plus tiers, not to mention what you can do with Gemini inside Google Slides? Here’s a detailed look.
How ChatGPT Handles Presentations for Free and Plus Users
When it comes to testing out AI tools, it helps to focus on something you’re already knowledgeable about so you can spot any mistakes. To test this, ChatGPT was prompted to pull information from the web about the new iPhone Duo. If you’re on the free or Plus plans, you can start a conversation, then ask for a slideshow or PowerPoint about it.
Plus accounts also have access to a specific Presentations add-on, available via the + (plus) menu in the prompt box, though this feature appears to be in a state of flux since ChatGPT Slides arrived. In any case, you can begin asking about the iPhone Duo specs and early online reactions, then say “build me a slideshow on the key features and reviews so far.”
A slideshow made with a ChatGPT Plus account — with a strange iPhone Duo screen mark. Credit: Lifehacker
What comes back on the $20 Plus account is a fairly competent slideshow on Apple’s foldable, with accurate information and a simple series of layouts. It looks like something you might whip up from a template if you were in a rush and didn’t have time to properly align all the bullet points or be very selective about which details to include. One neat touch is that ChatGPT was able to drop in an official photo of the iPhone Duo at the start of the slideshow, but you have to specifically ask for one.
You can go back and make specific edits to the slideshow, but you have to describe them in the general prompt box — you can’t select individual slide elements and make more precise changes. Still, if all you want to do is occasionally convert your ChatGPT conversations into a rough-and-ready slideshow, there’s no real need to upgrade from the free or Plus accounts for now.
ChatGPT Slides Is a Decent Upgrade
Switching to a Pro account, a similar task given to ChatGPT Slides yielded something more comprehensive. To begin with, Slides gets its own dedicated area in the app, so you can start a blank presentation from scratch — there are some basic image and text features, but the idea is to use prompts to build your slide deck. It’s like a really basic Google Slides, with a prompt box.
Creating a slideshow this way feels rather tedious: typing out what you want and then waiting for ChatGPT to execute it isn’t as intuitive as just dropping in graphics and text yourself, as you might do in PowerPoint. It also appears to be somewhat buggy, with some requests not properly completing.
With ChatGPT Pro and Slides, the presentation was much more polished. Credit: Lifehacker
Starting a standard conversation with ChatGPT and then converting all the information into a deck is much more useful. The resulting iPhone Duo slideshow was longer, better laid out, and more informative than the one created on the Plus plan — including charts of battery life and official photos.
ChatGPT Presentations Are Still Lacking at Every Tier
However, whether using the free, Plus, or Pro tools, the presentations don’t come across as particularly well thought through. They don’t flow smoothly, either across individual slides or the slideshow as a whole — it feels very much like an algorithm, rather than a person, has decided what information to include and where on the slides to place it.
Whether you create presentations in chats or through the ChatGPT Slides space, you can click on individual elements and do some basic manual resizing and repositioning. You can also request edits via prompts: “Drop in an image of a cat,” “make this pop more,” “center all of this information,” or similar instructions.
At every tier, ChatGPT’s presentation tools show promise but remain a work in progress. For users who need polished, professional decks, Google Slides with Gemini remains a strong competitor — and one that doesn’t require a $100-a-month subscription to unlock its best features.
