ChatGPT's capabilities continue to expand apace, 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 pricey 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? I've taken a detailed look.

How ChatGPT handles presentations for free and Pro 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, I decided to see what ChatGPT could hoover up 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 I get the impression this feature is 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, and 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 I got back on the $20 Plus account was a fairly competent slideshow on Apple's foldable, with accurate information as far as I could see, and a simple series of layouts. It looked 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 you included and which you left out. 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 I had 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, I gave a similar task to ChatGPT Slides hoping for something more comprehensive. To begin with, Slides gets its own dedicated area in the app, so you can start up 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 to say and then waiting for ChatGPT to do it isn't as intuitive as just throwing in some graphics and text yourself, as you might do in PowerPoint. It also seems to be a bit buggy, at least during the time I spent testing it, 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 turning all the information into a deck is much more useful from my perspective. My iPhone Duo slideshow was longer, laid out better, and more informative than the one I created on the Plus plan—there were even charts of battery life and official photos this time.

ChatGPT presentations are still lacking at every tier

However, whether I used the free, Plus, or Pro tools, my presentations didn't come across as particularly well thought through. They don't really 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 stick it.

Whether you create presentations in chats or through the ChatGPT Slides space, you're able to 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 whatever it is.

ChatGPT Slides gets its own space in the app. Credit: Lifehacker

ChatGPT Slides does offer collaborative tools, which I wasn't able to test, and I can see that being useful for teams heavily invested in ChatGPT's ecosystem. I can also imagine ChatGPT Slides coming in handy when you've got a lot of information you need to quickly dump into a slideshow that looks vaguely presentable.

In general though, I think I'd much rather stick to the traditional way of making slideshows for now. These old methods are more precise and more manageable, and give you full control over what's shown and where—even if they do take a bit longer. What's more, modern-day presentation tools come with so many templates and other layout aids that it's not difficult to put together something that's easy on the eyes while including all of the information you think is most critical.

How ChatGPT Slides compares to Google Slides in Google AI Pro

Google is, of course, also all the way in on AI (and then some), and if you pay for Google AI Pro ($19.99 a month) or above, you can have Gemini pop up right inside Google Slides to give you some assistance with your presentation-making. To compare the tools, I gave it the same task as I did ChatGPT, asking for a slide deck on the new iPhone Duo.

Gemini actually asked some questions along the way: about wht visual style to use, the audience to aim the slideshow at, and the details to highlight. Though it's always possible to put this sort of information manually into a prompt, this would be a helpful additional to ChatGPT Slides.

Google Slides and Gemini put together a polished but not perfect slide deck. Credit: Lifehacker

What Gemini and Google Slides produced was impressive in terms of the layout and overall vibe of the presentation: It felt much more like a human being had put together the slide deck compared to what ChatGPT had produced, in terms of the information chosen, the way the slides were laid out, and the color picks.

However, Google's result had its faults too: The presentation got the facts on the maximum brightness of the iPhone Duo screen wrong, and produced an "iPhone Duo" graphic that looked like two iPhones from around 2021 stuck together. ChatGPT Slides at least managed to pull official imagery from the Apple website.

That is clearly not an iPhone Duo... Credit: Lifehacker

You can't attach individual edit prompts to specific parts of your presentation in Google Slides as you can in ChatGPT Slides—you have to mention them in the general prompt box. That said, Google Slides is obviously a much more mature and established slideshow tool compared to the OpenAI equivalent, in terms of its features and layout options (it has been around for a decade, after all).

Given that extra software structure and the lower cost of entry, Gemini and Google Slides is the better option for AI-assisted slideshow making at the moment—though I wouldn't bet against OpenAI catching up. For now, ChatGPT Slides is something that's good to have available if you're already paying a lot for ChatGPT every month, but not a feature that makes it worth your while to swap your AI allegiance.