AI Life Hacks – Creating PowerPoint Presentations and Videos in a snap using Custom GPTs

#AILifeHacks is a new series of posts focused on the everyday use of AI, from lifehacks to turbocharge productivity at work to all the things AI can do to spark your creativity…plus secret AI superpowers you can leverage on the move.

While I’d done a couple of posts a year ago, on how to create effortless presentations using AI tools…and also AI generated videos, clearly things have advanced a fair bit since then. Most notably, the ability to create and use custom GPTs is a game changer for productivity. For this AI Life Hack, we’re going to use a bunch of different custom GPTs, all within the same conversation thread to see just how quickly and efficiently you can create content now, using Generative AI.

The Challenge

Create a well researched summary of what A Day in the life of a futuristic hotel (say in 2030) could look like. We want to tap into a variety of sources of information, from the web to existing YouTube videos and also research papers…then create a summary that can be turned into a video script, plus a basic Powerpoint presentation and a YouTube video itself.

The Final Result

Here’s a quick (sped up) video montage showing the process itself and the results…pretty impressive, right? And it was all super easy too!

I’d recommend watching this in full screen and in high definition (1080p)

The Process

The secret sauce in all of this is the variety of custom GPTs now available with ChatGPT 4 (the paid version)…the latest feature also allows you to “call” GPTs you’ve used in the past right within the conversation.

The custom GPTs used in this demo:

The Pros and Cons

The good stuff? Clearly you can save a LOT of time and energy by using the right GPTs in your workflow. I think Gen AI’s most under appreciated superpower is the ability to generate insights and summaries from large volumes of content in a jiffy. Don’t want to watch a 20min YouTube video and just get the insights…sure, there’s a GPT or plugin for that. Want to trawl through all the research out there to get just what you’re looking for? There’s a GPT for that too! And of course…you can use ChatGPT to even write, create images and craft custom output formats like PDFs, Powerpoint presentations and even Videos using more advanced integrations into other apps (via GPTs or plugins). The most useful and powerful GPTs remain those that can leverage a link to already sophisticated custom tools and datasets.

And the not so great stuff? You do need to know what you’re doing to get the best results, then take the drafts and build on them with your own expertise and creativity. Both ChatGPT and the GPT store are also evolving, so many of the GPTs that leverage links to other tools & datasets can sometimes be a bit glitchy…this will likely resolve itself as things mature. If you’re a heavy user, you’re also occasionally likely to run into usage caps with GPT 4, as I did while experimenting for this article. And if you want really polished outputs, you’ll likely end up paying at some point in the journey e.g. creating videos is a snap, but for higher resolutions, no watermarks and more custom editing, you’ll clearly need to subscribe to the tools and companies that have created these GPTs (for them, it’s a great way to both acquire new customers and make the underlying tools more powerful).

Final Thoughts

Still, overall I think custom GPTs add a LOT to workflows and they can be a real productivity superpower if you know how to leverage them right!

What did you think of this particular AI Life Hack? Have you tried any custom GPTs yet to boost your creativity and productivity…leave a comment and let us know your favourites!