We Rebuilt PPTX.ai

PPTX.ai started with a simple idea: give it your notes, a Word document or a PDF, and get a presentation back. People used it to turn dissertations into lecture slides and long reports into something they could present at a meeting.

That part worked. But making the slides is only half the job. The other half happens in the room, and a set of slides can't do much there except sit behind you while you talk.

So we rebuilt PPTX.ai from the ground up. It still writes your slides. Now it can also add polls and quizzes, and you can present straight from PPTX.ai while your audience answers on their phones.

Here's what's new.

Build the whole thing in one place

Everything happens in the studio. Give your presentation a name, then describe what you want: "Six slides introducing the new volunteer schedule, a poll on which shifts people prefer, and a short quiz on the safety rules." The assistant writes the slides and the questions together, in order.

When it's done, your slides appear in a list you can read through. Then keep going: "Make the second slide shorter." "Add a slide about parking." "Turn the last slide into a quiz question."

Fix small things yourself

Not every change needs the assistant. Every slide has an Edit button. Change the words and the preview updates as you type. Nothing is saved until you press save, and if you try to leave with unsaved changes, we'll check with you first.

You can also add a slide, copy one, delete one, or move it up and down the list.

Ask for the look you want

Describe the design in your own words: "warm and old-fashioned, like a café menu, with a serif font for the headings," or "navy and orange, lots of white space." The assistant designs it for this presentation. It can change more than colours and fonts: backgrounds, borders, and how quiz answers are laid out on the slide.

The design you see in the studio is the one your audience sees, on the big screen and on their phones.

Slides that fit

A slide with too much on it is hard to read from the back of the room. The assistant now checks its slides after writing them. If something runs off the edge, it shortens the slide or splits it in two, rather than shrinking the text until nobody can read it.

Slides also look the same wherever they're shown. What you approved on your laptop is what appears on the projector. On a phone, quiz and poll questions get their own layout, made for tapping.

Layouts for slides that aren't bullet points

Not every slide is a heading and a list. When you edit a slide, the Layout menu offers:

• Title, for the opening slide.
• Section break, to start a new part of the talk.
• Quote, set large in the middle of the slide.
• Two columns, for comparing two things side by side.

You can also just ask the assistant: "Make the third slide a quote."

Present it live

When you're ready, open the lobby. Your screen shows a QR code. People scan it, join on their phones, and follow along as you move through the slides. Polls and quizzes collect answers as you go, and you decide when to reveal the results. Speaker notes show up on your screen and nobody else's.

We wrote a separate post on how polls and quizzes work, with some ideas for using them.

Big requests pick up where they left off

If you ask for a long presentation, the assistant may stop partway and show a Continue writing button. Press it and it carries on from where it stopped. That still works if you closed the tab, or went to buy more credits and came back.

What hasn't changed

Your account, credits and subscription work the same way as before. Credits are only used when the assistant writes or changes something. Editing a slide yourself, presenting, and your audience's answers don't use any.

The presentations you made before are still in your library.

You still sign in with a code sent to your email. If your existing username doesn't fit the new sign-in, you'll be asked to choose a new one the first time. Most people won't see this.

Try it

Open the studio and describe your next presentation. If something doesn't work the way you expect, let us know.