The Future of AI for Presentation Skills

What is coming soon to the AI world and how should you adapt to it.

In this blog post, I want to dive into the exciting topic of AI and its future impact on public speaking and presentation skills. 

My first training was in mathematics, and, at the time, I had my first course on AI. It was about neural networks reading numbers on envelopes for postal services. What a journey it has been in the AI world since then! 

Now I have been using ChatGPT for 2 months after having been following YouTube channels about AI for years (quick shoutout to TwoMinutesPaper's video on ChatGPT taking an IQ test).

Before we get into the article, I want to clarify that I'll be playing the prediction game, which, as you all know, can be a tricky game where you lose most of the time. Of course, the predictions don't always come true in the end, but that's not the point. The exciting part is not whether the prophecy will come true but thinking about the direction we see it going.

So, with that in mind, let's talk about where AI currently lacks in terms of public speaking and presentation skills. In my opinion, there are three main areas where AI falls short and will substantially improve in the future. 

AI is still not good with narrative structures (but soon it will be)

The first is creativity and narration when it comes to public speaking. This gap will be filled very soon. Think about the three-act structure in movies or the Hero's Journey by Campbell. These structures are well-known and easy for AI to learn and use effectively. But even more than that, AI can be trained to create narratives with hooks and gauges that are engaging and keep the audience's attention. This is crucial for public speaking and presentation skills, as it's essential to keep your audience interested in what you're saying.

AI writes in its own style, not in yours.

The second area where AI falls short is reproducing a speaker's unique way of speaking. It's not that AI can't do it, but it's trained on a broad corpus of text, which leads to a generic tone of voice. However, this will change soon as well. AI can already learn a speaker's unique voice traits by analyzing audio files of them speaking to create deep fakes. This technology is already available and will only improve in the future. Imagine having an AI that can replicate your writing style and write posts and presentations that sound like you wrote them, even if you didn't. 

In the future, you'll simply have to submit a bunch of text you wrote or answer a few questions from the AI so that it can learn your own style on top of the pre-trained neural network it already has.

AI-generated texts are hard to deliver in a natural way.

The third and final area where AI has shortcomings is writing a script that is easy for a speaker to deliver on stage naturally. This is where the gap between writing and oral presentation comes in. 

While AI can write blog posts, reports, and emails in a well-written style, it requires an actor's skills and acting school training to make it natural to speak with the words of a script. 

But, with the advancements in AI, it is possible that AI will be trained to write scripts that are easy for a speaker to actually "speak." By analyzing the way the speaker speaks, the AI can learn the speaker's rhythm, intonation, and speaking patterns and use that to write a script that is tailored to the speaker's unique speaking style.

[Edit: As reality is moving faster than fiction now, here is a video on a new technique from Microsoft AI to recreate a person's voice in just 3 seconds of audio input (again from the TwoMinutesPaper channel)]

A Vision From the Future

My prediction is that in a few months or years, we will start our writing process by having a chat with some ChatGPT-like AI. The AI will ask us a few questions in a casual manner and use this short conversation to gain an idea of our style of speaking and writing. It will learn our style, maybe by browsing our blog or social media accounts, and then be able to mimic our style, way of writing, and tone of voice. It might even be happening during a casual voice conversation with Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant.

At this time, AI will truly be an assistant for our every interaction with people, as it will be able to put itself in our shoes. But it will most surely come with limitations and impact on our communications.

What do you think will likely occur? An optimistic future where lack of style with not be preventing our good ideas to spread or a distopian future where everyone will speak and write in the same style, rehashing the same opinions drawn from a common knowledge pool forzen in 2021? Leave a comment below with your (human) opinion.

Get ready because it is coming soon...

In conclusion, while AI is still lacking in certain areas when it comes to public speaking and presentation skills, I believe that it's only a matter of time before these gaps are filled. 

My advice is:

Learn today to use AI to your advantage so you don't miss the turn when it happens. Read my article on how to use AI for presentation writing.

The technology is already available and will only continue to improve in the future. Not only AI can help speakers to improve their skills, but also help them to create and deliver speeches more efficiently and effectively.

 With AI, we will create presentations that are more engaging, more personalized, and more effective than ever before. It's an exciting time to be in this field, and I can't wait to see how AI will change the game.