Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - Ep 647: The New Secret Google Gemini Feature that Quietly Kills Powerpoint slides

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Three words to Google Gemini and you can kiss your PowerPoint woes goodbye. 👋Google Gemini quietly rolled out a kinda secret feature that TBH was deserving of a keynote. So how do you create slides in Google Gemini? And what are the pros and the limitations? Tune in as we put AI to Work on Wednesdays. The New Secret Google Gemini Feature that Quietly Kills Powerpoint slides -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan WilsonNewsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Thoughts on this? Join the convo and connect with other AI leaders on LinkedIn.Upcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:Google Gemini Canvas Mode Presentation FeatureCreate a Presentation Command for SlidesExporting Gemini Canvas to Google SlidesGemini’s Automated Slide Design CapabilitiesComparing Gemini Canvas vs. Google Slides AIAdvanced Gemini Canvas Iteration TipsIntegrating Context Data in Gemini PresentationsLimitations of Gemini Slide and Image UploadsTimestamps:00:00 AI Revolutionizing Slide Creation04:13 "AI Feature Demo Wednesdays"07:40 "Gemini Canvas Live Demo"09:52 OpenAI's Ownership Transition Explained13:57 "Google Gemini vs Slides"18:17 "GenAI Strategy & Training"20:00 "Google Gemini's Select & Ask Guide"23:21 "Slide Branding Made Consistent"29:25 "AI Tools for Business Plans"30:10 "Google Gemini for Presentations"Keywords:Google Gemini, Gemini Canvas, AI slides, AI-powered presentations, create a presentation, Gemini slides feature, Google Slides export, PowerPoint alternative, AI presentation generator, generative AI, slide automation, presentation design with AI, Gemini Canvas mode, Google Workspace integration, Chart creation in Gemini, Visual presentations, AI context window, Cap table visualization, Timeline slides, Interactive websites with Gemini, Canvas select and ask, Export to PDF, Presentation branding with AI, Slide customizationSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. One of the most important elements of winning back time with generative AI is not going out

of your way. You need to match the best AI tool or mode with the work that you're already needing to do. And let's be honest, presentations are still one of those things that we're spending so much time on. And there's great AI tools to make slides, but they also have their limitations. Like, Gamma is great, but I find it to be unpredictable at times, especially with buggy PDF and PowerPoint exports. And Microsoft Copilot obviously has some great AI features inside a PowerPoint.

But so few people actually have access to most of copilot's features because of data privacy and security. So will a new AI slide champion enter? Well, Google Gemini, it might be you. Because there's a. a new secret Google Gemini feature that might quietly kill PowerPoint slides. But it's technically in Gemini, but you've got to technically be in canvas mode. And you technically have to use the right words.

But don't worry, I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to know. It's going to be a fast one. And we're going to put AI to work for us on this Wednesday. What's going on, y'all? Welcome to Everyday AI. My name is Jordan Wilson. and this is your daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter, helping everyday business leaders like you and me,

not just keep up with AI, but how we can make sense of all these changes and advancements, use them to get ahead to grow our companies and our careers. That's what you're trying to do. Starts here with the unedited, unscripted, live stream podcast, but to take it to the next level, if you want to be the smartest person in AI at your company, go to our website, your everyday AI.com.

There, we obviously break down the highlights from each and every podcast episode of that day, but also we keep you up to date with all of the other latest AI news that you need to know. Let's get into it. I'm not going to make you wait any longer. There's three words that you're going to need.

Create a presentation. All right. But there's a lot more that you need to know. So I'm going to show you how to use this new feature inside of Google Gemini. And at the end, And I'm going to give you three tips on how to best use it. But on today's show, we're going to learn how and why to use Gemini Canvas for all types of presentations.

We're going to uncover and explore that three word phrase, create a presentation that can kill off maybe some of your PowerPoint designing. And we're going to learn the pros and the cons of using the new slides feature in Gemini Canvas. That's kind of hidden, but extremely powerful. Let's get into it. Let's learn live. Live stream audience, love to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for joining.

Bronson, thanks for joining on YouTube, Rolando, J, Juliet, everyone else. Good to see you, Robert. Let's get straight into it. This is going to be one of those ones, not necessarily a visual show, but if you do, want to follow along, make sure to go to our website, your everyday AI.com. All right. So we always have the video version there. Live stream audience, do me a favor.

I'm going to be jumping around a little bit on our live stream here. So if you could let me know if you see my screen, all right, before we get started. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give you a primer on how canvas. mode in Google Gemini works. And that's where you are going to use that three word phrase, create a presentation. Yeah, there is no toggle or button that you click, which can be a good thing. Maybe it's a bad thing at first.

But if you want to take advantage of this amazing feature, that's how you do it. All right. So here's exactly what we're going to do. And I'm going to do this live on Wednesdays. We do this thing called putting AI to work on Wednesdays. We do a usually live demo of a newer AI feature, usually from one of the big four players, right? Microsoft co-pilot, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, or Chad, GBT, GBT. So, you know, kind of demoing new features.

And this is one, honestly, this is worthy of a keynote. But Google literally, not even on their main Twitter account, on their Google Gemini app account, they put out one tweet. And that is it. And this is one of those small little features. that I think everyone needs to be using. All right. All right. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully there's a delay. I didn't see anyone say that they see my screen, but I'm just going to hope and assume that y'all can't. So here's what I have. I have yesterday's podcast episode. All right? It went a little long. So today's episode, we're going to be a little short. It's going to be a short and sweet one today.

So this was how can a former nonprofit losing 12 billion a quarter, go public at one trillion dollars. So this was a story about kind of our hot take Tuesday episode about Open AI. So on our website, if you didn't know, you can always go listen to the podcast episode on our website. You can also watch the video. All right. And then we break down some of the topics, have a little write up, and then an entire transcript of the actual episode. So I'm going to just copy and paste this entire thing.

Okay. Now I am inside Google Gemini. All right. Thank you, Joe, Marie, and Jay for letting me know. You can see the screen. So in Google Gemini, you're going to click the new or not the new. It is an updated layout, but this is not a new button. So you're going to click on tools and then go to Canvas mode.

So I'm going to just make this very easy. All right. I'm going to just say, create. Using Canvas, highlight the main points of this podcast and create a presentation. All right. And then I'm going to copy and paste it. So that's all I'm saying. I'm saying using Canvas highlight the main points of this podcast.

Love typing live. And our three word phrase, create a presentation. All right. I've tried other combination of words. Some work, some don't, you know, you know, create a Google slides file, create a slideshow. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't because Canvas mode, and I'll explore it just a little bit with you all here. It can actually create a lot of different things. So I'm letting this cook right now.

It should just take two minutes, but that's literally all I did. I just said using Canvas, highlight the main points of this podcast and create a presentation. And then I pasted the entire content of the podcast that's on our episode page. That's it. All right. So our live stream audience is going to see this happening live. If you're on the podcast, I will walk you through what's happening. But it's creating it now.

Okay. So I can see it kind of building the slides. It split my screen on the left hand side. I can continue to chat with Google Canvas mode. But on the right side, you will see now it says creating slides. And if you've listened to the show at all, you know, one of my, what I think is probably the most underrated feature or mode out there is Gemini Canvas. So, yes, it has some similarities with Open AIs canvas mode and some similarities with Claude's artifacts mode. The difference is I think it is great at building interactive websites visually.

That's what I use it for. I use Canvas mode all the time to put together. just visual presentations, right? But up until now, you haven't been able to actually export those as slides. All right. And you'll see now it's done. That was quick, right? We can end the show at eight minutes. We're not because I'm also going to give you three tips on how to best use this feature. But you'll see it's already done. Okay. Um, 12 slides completely done. So it, uh, it, uh, it, it, named it the $1 trillion paradox. Maybe that's what I should have named the actual episode.

And then it says, how open AI losing 12 billion a quarter, preparing for a one trillion dollar IPO. All right. So now on the right side, I can toggle through these slides. And you'll see for our live stream audience, pretty good, right?

They're designed fairly well. It has a nice little heading for each of our slides, using some bright colors going in a, dark mode that I really like. It broke out, love this. Didn't even tell it to. It broke out a essentially a cap table on OpenAIs recapitalization. Because in the context of the episode, I specifically said, Microsoft, 27%,

Open AI Foundation, 26%. It took a little leeway with putting the other 47%, because there's actually a little bit more of breakdown. But if I would have named off the other percentage, It would have put that together. But it accurately kind of created this nice little cap table on the new ownership structure of the Public Benefits Corporation of OpenAI, transitioning from a strict nonprofit to a public benefits corporation. It created a table or a chart there. All right.

Then we have a slide, very nice looking slide here, FYI, with three little breakout boxes with kind of subheadings. And each of them has a little icon. Looks good. Right. So it says the user first strategy. This is one of the things that I broke down. It says 800 million weekly users, 70% of their revenue comes from consumers and ecosystem stickiness. So not only did it do a good job of creating very usable slides, FYI, it did a great job of consolidating and organizing all of the information.

Because, yeah, yesterday's podcast was an accidentally kind of long one. So it cut through a lot of my fluff. Yeah, I know. There's fluff in the show, y'all. And it created a pretty good looking, pretty good looking presentation here. Okay. It also, here we go on slide nine here. It put together a kind of a timeline on some of the other startups that have gone many years without being profitable, right?

Open AIs technically on year four of not being profitable. But on yesterday's show, we talked about Amazon, Spotify, Tesla. you know, taking between nine to 17 years, uh, to become profitable. So it created a nice little timeline here visually. So, uh, pretty good. It did put some placeholders in here. And again, let me say this. Generative AI is generative.

I ran this exact same, uh, prompt verbatim like two or three times last night, two or three times today. Sometimes it will actually create images for you using Google Gemmonaut. All right. Sometimes it will give you placeholders. with a little more prompting and a little more iterating. You know, you can obviously update it accordingly. All right.

That's the gist, y'all. I'm going to get into some advanced tips here in three best practices, I think. But that's it. Go into Google Gemini. You don't even need a paid plan to do this. Google Gemini, click tools. click canvas use those three magic words and then you have the options to export to slides all right and then that will open that presentation and i'll go ahead and do that so you can see what it looks

like uh you can export it to google slides or you can instantly download it as a PDF and then obviously you know if you do right like if you are a PowerPoint organization uh you can obviously open this in Google slides and then export it or convert it over to a PowerPoint file. If you ultimately need to make some updates inside a PowerPoint, right, if you are sharing that, you know, in your team, in your organization. So let's see, there we go. So a little UI, UX thing. All right, if you're like, wait, where's my slides file?

It's a very little thing on the lower left hand corner of the screen if you're looking for it. The first time I clicked the export to slides, I'm like, okay, well, where is it? Okay, it's in the bottom left hand corner. Click that little open slides and there you go. All right. So now it is created, it's created that file. It's exported it to Google slides. I can make any changes here.

All right. Now, you might be wondering, why not just do this in Google slides? Why do it in Gemini? Well, let me tell you. Or, you know, why not, yeah, why do it in Google Gemini's canvas mode? And why not just do it in Google slides and use the Gemini option? Well, let me show you. I want to put that exact same prompt that I used.

Okay. Let me just go ahead and copy and paste it. And you'll see what I mean. All right. So I'm now in Google slides. I'm using the Gemini integration. And you'll see here in a few seconds. And I'll spoil it for you.

It's not good. It's not good at all. Right. Google, to their credit, has really improved the Gemini integration across their workspace products. But some are great. Some are. Okay.

The Gemini integration in Gmail, hit or miss. Gemini integration in Microsoft Word, pretty good. Gemini integration in Google slides, really good. Gemini integration in Google Vids, amazing. Gemini integration in Google slides, useless, right? So if you're wondering, oh, well, I'm just going to use the Google slides. Don't. It's not good, right?

In this case, it, you know, didn't even work. Last time it at least gave me one or two ugly looking slides. This time it didn't. So let's get into the three tips that you need to know to make this better. Okay, so kind of some three expert tips. And live stream audience, if you guys do have any questions, go ahead and get them in now. We are literally going to make this a fast and furious episode. So number one, start with a screenshot to cut down on design time.

I'm going to, actually, let me give you the three tips. Number one, start with the screenshots cut down on design time. Number two, understand the capabilities and limitations, right? So as an example, you can't upload photos to include, even though Gemini will tell you it can. You can't. All right? You can't include image source links. You can do that in canvas.

You can't do it in the slides integration in canvas. But canvas in Google slides, or sorry, the Google slides feature inside canvas can create great looking charts, graphs, tables, breakout boxes, etc. Tip one, start with a screenshot. Tip two, understand capabilities and limitation. Tip three, iterate in normal canvas mode first with the select and ask feature. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and kind of reverse engineer this and show you. exactly what I mean.

So I'm going to do something a little different here. All right. I'm going to open a new chat here in Gemini. I'm going to go to Canvas mode. I'm going to copy and paste this and I'm going to tell you what I'm doing differently. Now, here's why you need the three magic words. I said using Canvas, highlight the main points of this podcast episode and create dramatic visuals. All right, I'm doing this for a reason.

What's going to happen now? Well, it's going to create probably an interactive, like, website. It is not going to create a presentation. Okay. So I'm going to give it in a minute and I paste it in the exact same content. And I'm going to show you now. All right, it's going to take a minute. But on my screen, Canvas is doing what it's really good at, which is writing and rendering code.

All right, that's what Canvas mode is. really good at. So now, I'm going to actually just iterate on this real quick. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Powered by Adobe's creative agent, Firefly AI assistant lets you start with your vision, just describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with the assistant. The assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows drawing on 60 plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator,

Premiere, Lightroom Express, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks, like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations. Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. All right.

It didn't give me quite enough info, so I'm just saying please include more info. Please try again. But what it did is it created almost like an interactive website with the same content that I pasted in using Canvas mode. I wanted it to have a little bit more information. Usually when I do a simple prompt like that, it will include a lot more. So it's going to rebuild this. So an example, you can do the exact same thing.

This is the iteration or iterating in natural language with your presentation. So you can just say, make this more visual. Include more information. Hey, I paste it in a lot, but you didn't include A, B, and C. Please include it. So iterate with your slides once they are done. Say in slide six, change this. But a little tip, here we go.

All right. So first, I just did a normal kind of website presentation. So use this feature. There is a select and ask feature in the bottom right hand corner when you are using normal canvas mode in Google Gemini. Okay? This is not going to show up once you are kind of. of in slides mode.

But the trick is to use it in the normal canvas mode first because it's an extremely powerful little tool. And then you can create the canvas mode or sorry, the slides mode once you've used it. So as an example, I'm going to use this select and ask feature. It broke out one section and kind of created three separate boxes. All right. Product velocity, revenue levers and infrastructure deals. all right, from the podcast episode yesterday.

So I can highlight that and then a little box pops up that says, Ask Gemini. All right. And I'm going to say it made four bullet points and it's not the best layout. So I'm going to say, please add icons to the top of the boxes and limit to three bullet points only. Okay. So this is a very powerful feature. So if you've ever had to iterate on.

anything in any large language model. The downside is generative AI is generative AI. So you can try the best with your words and say, hey, on this paragraph that says A, B, and C, make X, Y, Z changes. But sometimes it's going to change the top, the bottom, and everything in between. So with this select and ask feature, you literally drag a box over just the section that you want to update, give it changes in natural language. And then most of the time, it is only.

going to update those things. So let's scroll down. Bam, we got it. It worked. Yay. A live generative AI demo worked. Great. Okay. So that's kind of one of the three tips there. Technically, too, because I know the capabilities and the limitations as well. So I know as an example, one thing that Gemini Canvas can do really well is it creates nice looking breakout boxes with icons, right, which translates really well to slides. All right. So technically we did two of our advanced tips. All right. We use some of the normal canvas features before kind of quote unquote going into slides mode. We understood the capabilities and limitations. And then I'm going to iterate with a screenshot. So I have a screenshot here of kind of our normal slides layout. Okay. And I'm just

going to drag that in. Sorry, live stream audience. A lot of jumping around here in my different tabs. Okay. So I'm just going to drop that into the chat window on the left hand side. And all I'm going to say is, this is our normal style. Please update the presentation accordingly to reflect this style. So what's going to hopefully happen here? It's going to kind of take into account kind of the design choices. My live stream slides are ugly. It's fine.

You can tell me, y'all, this is for, you know, to help keep me on track. But it's going to take in the colors, the layout, and even the, it's going to try to match up fonts. So you can't upload a slide deck to start with and then say, you know, convert this to a Google slide, right? So that's not what it is. But you can upload multiple examples of how you would normally build slides, right? whether there's a certain layout.

I guess my brand on slides is ugly, right? So it's probably technically going to make this uglier because the version that it did was actually pretty good. And so it's probably going to make a worst visual. But if I want consistent visuals, if I want consistent branding right across the slides that I ask Canvas to create, this is the way to do it. So it is iterating.

And FYI, y'all, as with anything else, There's going to be this as you wait, even though it's not a ton of time. It gives you the chain of thought. So click on that and always read what's happening. Because as an example, sometimes large language models, especially new features, are buggy. They don't always know what they're talking about. They don't know their capabilities.

Right? Because as an example, you can upload images in normal canvas mode. You can't do that when you go into slides mode. Okay. So, bam, we're done. It created, it did a really good job of, you know, making the really good looking slides that it had created on its own with Gemini Canvases style. It just made them uglier now. But it matched, right?

But it matched exactly what I uploaded, right? It put kind of the, the bluish heading, the reddish kind of subhead, and then the big white bullet points and the call to action at the bottom. So it did a pretty good job of just changing based on the information that I uploaded. All right. So yeah, okay, Juliet says the colors are muted. I wouldn't call them ugly. I don't know. All right.

I'd say it's a little ugly. All right. Gene says, can Gemini slides make a presentation from a YouTube clip URL like one of your episodes, for example? Kind of, kind of, right? So it depends on what version of Google Gemini you have. So as an example, not all workspace accounts, accounts have the essential YouTube app integration inside Gemini Canvas. Like for that, I would have to use my personal account. I have multiple paid accounts.

But technically, yes, you can. Right. So inside Canvas, right, like the same with any. large language model. You can take advantage of the context window. So yes, Google Gemini in general does a great job of integrating with your Gmail if you enable those apps and extensions. So if you want to know how to access that, let me just go ahead and show you. You would go into your settings. You would go into apps. And then you can toggle these apps on. And for, Yeah, okay, good. I was right.

I'm like, man, I hope I don't get this. I hope I don't get this wrong. So yeah, for whatever reason, Google workspace accounts don't have the YouTube app integrated inside Google Gemini. I don't understand why. But they do have Asana in MailChimp, right? But they also have Gmail, Google Docs, Google Keep, Google Task, Google Drive, Google Calendar. Right, but Gene, a great question.

Use, take advantage of all of the features that a large language model has, specifically the contacts window, right? So you could, as an example, pull in information from all of your different Google Drive files, your Google Calendar, your Gmail, right? If you're putting something together for a client as an example, it can go look at your calendar, say, oh, you have three meetings. Here's what the meeting's covering. Let me see, oh, it looks like you're, you know, going over Q4 KPIs. I see that in your calendar notes. Let me go look through your Gmail. Oh, looks like there's some documents. I need to reference. Yes, you can do that inside Google Gemini, keep that in the context window, and then use canvas and that three, the magic three word

phrase create a presentation. And then, yes, it will create slides. All right. Yeah, Jackie, Jackie here echoing what I said. She said, 100% Jordan, when I wanted to add a slide in Google slides, it sucked. It's not that good, right? It's not. But it's actually legit, really, really good inside Google Gemini. So now you all know the cheat code. That's it, y'all. Actually, no, I want to ask you, what should we cover next week, right?

As we wrap, on Mondays, we do the AI news that matters. We go over usually the top 10 AI news stories at the week that impact your company or career. Tuesdays, we kind of do hot take Tuesdays, you know, kind of my opinion on something that's happening. I did my opinion on the whole open AI restructure and one trillion dollar IPO. And then on Wednesdays, we do this AI at work on Wednesdays.

So live stream audience, let me know what should we tackle next week. Also, podcast audience, if you're listening on Spotify, go scroll down in the show notes. There's going to be a poll today. I'm going to be including more polls inside of Spotify. So what should we tackle next week for putting AI to work on Wednesdays? Claude, skills, really great new feature. People aren't talking about. No Book LM updates.

There's actually been quite a few notebook LM updates, different video styles, context windows, a ton of things, or going over, again, these are three low-key updates that are pretty big. The third one, Chad TPT's company knowledge. So this is only available if you have a business kind of team plan or an enterprise plan, but there's actually new connectors and some new features and functionalities if you do have a team plan. So go vote, live stream audience. Let me know. just say skills, notebook LM, company knowledge, and that's it.

I hope today's show was helpful. But here's the reality. If you want to save time with generative AI, you need to use the right tool at the right time for the right purpose. And I think regardless of what you work on, so many people have to create presentations. And like I said, yes, there's great AI tools that create are dedicated to creating AI, you know, slides, presentations. They can be buggy, and a lot of them require a separate subscription.

PowerPoint has completely dominated the presentation scene for decades yet. I know, probably, less than 5% of people that I talk to who have Microsoft 365 copilot license actually have access to all of Microsoft co-pilots features, including creating PowerPoints with AI, with co-pilot. So I think in this case, Google Gemini can be your go-to tool. Take advantage of the power of Gemini 2.5 Pro. Take advantage of the context window. Take advantage of everything that Google Gemini can access in terms of your apps and all of its capabilities.

And then use that magic three-word phrase. Create a presentation. I hope this was helpful. If so, go to your everyday AI.com. If you're listening on the podcast, I'd appreciate it. If you subscribe to the podcast, follow us, leave us a raise. Thanks for tuning in. Hope to see you back tomorrow and every day for more everyday AI. Thanks y'all. Meet Firefly AI Assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio.

Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest. Orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in and refurb. find at any time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter

so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.