Presenting With artificial intelligence is used in many business presentations and is often used in our own public speaking courses. I experienced this very recently. After presenting a business-related topic to the group, a delegate shared the fact that as she hadn’t had time to prepare for it, she asked ChatGPT to write it for her.
Before her admission, while listening carefully to her presentation I made notes along the lines of her content sounding very generic and overly wordy. Whilst it sounded intellectually professional, containing a lot of detail, it didn’t feel ‘real’. To make matters worse, as it wasn’t her own content or choice of words, she felt compelled to read most of it to the group and sounded quite robotic.
Used poorly, AI can stifle creativity, charm and authenticity. Used well, it saves time and helps us to organise, structure and sharpen ideas.
Information is everywhere
Many of us are drowning in information. It’s coming at us faster and more abundantly than ever, from an expanding range of digital sources.
The purpose of most business presentations is to share knowledge, ideas, insights and data.
We need information to:
Make decisions
Innovate
Collaborate
Plan
Manage risk
Measure performance
AI accelerates access to that information, but more data doesn’t solve the real problem: communicating it clearly and compellingly.
The real challenge
Volume, velocity and complexity of information can erode human connection. AI is a powerful tool for finding and processing data, but it can’t substitute strong communication. Audiences today expect authenticity, clarity and impact, not a cascade of facts.
How AI can MAKE your presentation
Beyond rapid access to content, AI can help you:
– Organise and structure your thinking
– Sharpen your core message
– Create a clear, logical outline
– Extract key points from dense research
– Tailor content to audience knowledge levels
– Draft entire scripts or talking points when needed
– Design slides and suggest visuals
– Surface ideas you may have missed
– Convert data into effective visuals
– Analyse datasets and highlight trends
– Suggest audience engagement techniques
– Generate powerful headlines and messages
– Provide feedback as a speech coach on verbal elements
How AI can BREAK your presentation
If used without great care, AI can:
– Produce generic, wordy content that lacks the human voice
– Fail to capture emotional nuance
– Be obvious as AI-generated content
– Stifle original thought and creativity
– Erode authenticity and audience connection
– Encourage dependence that leads to monotone delivery
– Reinforce bad habits instead of correcting them
– Never truly know your audience like you do
– Replace empathy and human perspective
– Leave audiences thinking “someone else wrote this”
– Undermine storytelling and imaginative thinking
– Fail to evoke the emotion needed to connect
Use AI mindfully
When used mindfully AI can help you refine, polish and amplify your message, but it’s still a tool. It can’t replace the sincerity, humility and passion that make a presentation memorable and impactful.
Think of PowerPoint: when it launched it revolutionised presentations. It’s been used brilliantly and disastrously. The tool isn’t the problem, how we use it is.
Please remember
In humanistic terms, AI cannot:
Smile
Breathe
Love
Hope
Feel
Care
Empathise
Connect
Keep that list in mind whenever you’re tempted to let AI do all the speaking for you. Human presence is unique to us. The small gestures, pauses, inflections and genuine emotional expression is what turns information into influence. AI cannot feel, express passion, compassion, empathy and trust.
Confession
While writing this article I asked AI it to share some of the advantages and disadvantages of using it for presentations. I then asked it to refine, edit and make my blog article a more powerful read.
The process was interesting and helpful. I didn’t like or agree with everything it gave me but I took those that did resonate with my thinking and objective and used them in my own words.
If you want to improve your presentations:
– Book yourself onto a powerful public speaking course.
– Invest in some good one to one public speaking coaching.
– Get yourself some excellent presentation training
Image courtesy of Canva.com
