The Google Slides Problem

Google Slides is everywhere. It’s free, collaborative, and runs in any browser. But let’s be honest: building a presentation in Slides from scratch is a slog. The templates are uninspired. The design tools are clumsy. Layout tweaking eats half your afternoon.

Enter Plus AI — an add-on that lives directly inside Google Slides. It generates entire presentations, edits individual slides, and rewrites content, all without leaving the Slides interface. I’ve been testing it for three weeks across different project types. Here’s what works, what doesn’t, and whether it earns a spot in your workflow.

What Plus AI Actually Does

Plus AI installs as a Google Workspace add-on. Open any Slides file, launch it from the Extensions menu, and you get a sidebar with AI controls. The core features:

  • Full deck generation. Type a topic, pick a template, and Plus AI builds a complete presentation — slides, text, images, the works.
  • Slide-by-slide editing. Select a slide, tell Plus AI what you want (“add a timeline showing Q1-Q4 milestones”), and it regenerates that slide in place.
  • Content rewriting. Highlight text, tell it to shorten, expand, change tone, or translate.
  • Template switching. Apply a different visual template to an existing deck without rebuilding content.

The integration is deep. Generated slides use native Slides elements — text boxes, shapes, images — so everything remains fully editable. No locked-down design blocks. No weird proprietary format.

Generation Quality: Strong Start, Needs Polish

I prompted it to build a “Series A pitch deck for a B2B SaaS company in the supply chain space.” Plus AI produced 12 slides: problem statement, solution overview, market size, business model, competitive landscape, traction, team, financial projections, ask, and appendix.

The structure was solid — surprisingly good for a first-pass AI output. Slide logic flowed naturally. The content was directionally correct: accurate problem framing, reasonable market numbers, logical business model breakdown.

But the writing felt generic. Descriptions like “Our innovative platform leverages cutting-edge technology to transform supply chain operations” are the kind of AI-speak investors glaze over. You’ll definitely need a human editing pass to inject specifics, personality, and numbers that reflect your actual business.

On factual content, Plus AI is middle-of-the-pack. It won’t hallucinate wildly, but it also won’t give you deeply researched insights. Think of it as a capable first-draft writer, not a subject matter expert.

Design and Templates

Plus AI offers about 20 template families — modern, minimal, bold, corporate, creative. Quality is decent but not exceptional. Templates feel like what you’d get from a competent freelance designer: clean, professional, but not award-winning.

Colors are well-balanced. Typography choices are safe (mostly Google Fonts — Roboto, Open Sans, Montserrat). Layout proportions are reasonable. But nothing makes you think “wow, I want to keep looking at this.”

Compared to Gamma or Beautiful.ai, the design output is a clear tier below. Gamma’s decks have visual flair; Beautiful.ai’s have near-design-studio polish. Plus AI’s feel like… really good Google Slides. Which, given that they ARE Google Slides, might be exactly the point.

The upside: because everything is native Slides, you can tweak freely. Change fonts. Adjust colors. Move elements. No restrictions. For teams that want AI to handle the grunt work but still exercise design control, this is genuinely valuable.

The Slides-Native Advantage

This is Plus AI’s killer feature, and it matters more than you’d think. Most AI presentation tools live in their own platforms. You generate a deck there, export it to PPTX, and cross your fingers that formatting survives.

Plus AI skips the export entirely. Every slide, every text box, every shape is a real Google Slides element. When you finish generating, you’re already in Slides — ready to present, share, or collaborate with your team in real time.

For Google Workspace-heavy teams, this is transformative. No new tool to learn. No export-import dance. No “sorry, the formatting broke during export” conversations. Your deck lives in Slides from moment one to final delivery.

One concrete example: I generated a quarterly business review deck. My colleague jumped in via shared link, added actual Q3 numbers to the charts Plus AI had set up, and we presented it two hours later. Zero friction.

AI Slide Editing: The Hidden Gem

Full-deck generation gets the attention, but Plus AI’s slide-level editing is the feature I used most. Select any slide, type what you want, and it rebuilds that slide.

Example: I had a slide with a wall of bullet points. I selected it, typed “turn this into a 2x2 grid with icons,” and Plus AI restructured it — four cards, each with an icon, title, and description. The content was preserved. The layout was transformed.

Another: “Add a comparison table showing our product vs. three competitors across five dimensions.” It generated a reasonable table with mostly-accurate feature comparisons. I corrected two cells, and the slide was done.

This slide-editing capability is genuinely time-saving in a way that feels practical rather than magical. It solves the specific pain point of “I know what this slide should look like but I don’t want to build it.”

Where It Falls Short

  • Image selection is hit-or-miss. Plus AI pulls stock images from Unsplash and similar sources. Sometimes it nails the vibe. Sometimes you get a completely random photo. Plan to swap images yourself.
  • Chart generation is basic. Bar charts and line charts work. Anything more complex (waterfall, radar, Sankey) isn’t supported at the AI generation level.
  • No brand kit. Unlike Beautiful.ai, there’s no way to lock in brand colors, fonts, or logos so every generation adheres to your company identity.
  • Chinese language generation is rough. The tool is clearly optimized for English. Chinese text comes out stiff and occasionally nonsensical.

Pricing

Plus AI offers a free tier with limited generations. The Pro plan runs $10/month and gives you unlimited generations, template switching, and priority support. An Enterprise tier adds team management features. For the price, it’s reasonable — on par with Gamma’s paid tier and cheaper than Beautiful.ai.

Who Should Use It

Plus AI isn’t trying to replace PowerPoint or Keynote. It’s not trying to be the most beautiful presentation tool. It’s doing one thing very well: bringing AI generation into Google Slides and staying out of your way.

This makes it ideal for:

  • Google Workspace teams who live in Slides and want AI without switching platforms
  • Consultants and analysts who need to produce lots of structured decks quickly
  • Startup founders building pitch decks who value editability over design perfection
  • Anyone frustrated by the “generate in one tool, export to another” workflow

If you’re after jaw-dropping design, go with Gamma or Beautiful.ai. If you want the most practical, friction-free AI slide generation for Google Slides, Plus AI is your pick. It’s not the flashiest tool in the AI presentation space — but it might be the most useful one for the right audience.