Slides and Meet: Presentations and Meetings

Presentations and meetings consume more professional time than almost anything else. Gemini in Slides generates decks you’d normally spend hours building. Gemini in Meet captures notes so you can focus on the conversation.

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, you learned to use Gemini in Sheets for formula generation, data analysis, and the =AI() function. Now you’ll apply AI to two more time-intensive tasks: creating presentations and running meetings.

Google Slides: AI-Generated Presentations

Creating a Full Deck

Open Google Slides and use the Gemini side panel or “Help me create” to generate a presentation:

Prompt: “Create an 8-slide presentation for our team about the 2026 product roadmap. Include:

• Title slide with the theme ‘Building the Future’
• Q4 2025 recap (3 key achievements)
• Market landscape (2-3 trends)
• 2026 priorities (4 strategic pillars)
• Timeline with key milestones
• Team structure and responsibilities
• Budget overview
• Q&A / next steps slide

Use a clean, modern layout. Blue and white color scheme.”

Gemini generates the slide structure with placeholder content. Your job: replace placeholders with real data and adjust the visuals.

Improving Individual Slides

Select text on any slide and ask Gemini to improve it:

• “Make this bullet list more concise — max 6 words per bullet”
• “Rewrite this slide for a non-technical audience”
• “Turn this paragraph into 4 key statistics with labels”
• “Add a compelling opening line to this slide”

✅ Quick Check: Gemini generated a slide titled “Market Opportunity” with three bullet points. The content is generic — “The market is growing” and “Customers want better solutions.” How do you fix this? (Answer: Replace the generic text with your specific data. Either edit directly: “The [your industry] market grew 23% in 2025 to $4.2B (Source: Gartner)” or re-prompt with specifics: “Rewrite the market opportunity slide. Market size: $4.2B, growing 23% YoY. Our segment: $800M. Key drivers: enterprise AI adoption, compliance requirements, remote work.” Generic slides with real numbers become compelling slides.)

AI Image Generation

Gemini can create images directly in Slides:

• “Generate an illustration of a diverse team collaborating around a whiteboard”
• “Create a simple diagram showing data flowing from users to servers to analytics”
• “Generate a professional icon set for: security, speed, reliability, integration”

Limitation: AI-generated images work well for generic illustrations but not for data visualizations, org charts, or anything requiring precision. Use them for visual interest, not data communication.

Speaker Notes

Ask Gemini to write speaker notes for each slide:

Prompt: “Write speaker notes for this slide. The audience is our leadership team. Include the key talking points and a suggested transition to the next slide. Keep it to 3-4 sentences.”

This is especially useful when someone else will present your slides — the notes provide context they’d otherwise need a briefing for.

Google Meet: AI Meeting Notes

Take Notes with Gemini

When enabled, Gemini listens to your meeting and generates:

• Meeting summary — What was discussed, in order
• Key decisions — Specific outcomes agreed upon
• Action items — Who committed to doing what, by when
• Follow-ups — Suggested next steps

How to Enable

1. Start or join a Google Meet call
2. Click the pencil icon (Take notes) or look for “Take Notes with Gemini”
3. Gemini begins transcribing and analyzing
4. After the meeting, notes are saved to a Google Doc linked in the calendar event

What Gemini Captures Well

• The structure and flow of the meeting
• Explicitly stated decisions: “Let’s go with Option B”
• Clear action items: “Sarah will send the report by Friday”
• Topic transitions: when the conversation shifted subjects

What Gemini Misses

• Implicit agreements — Nodding, “Mmhmm,” or silence = consent doesn’t register
• Tone and subtext — “That’s… an interesting approach” might signal disagreement
• Side conversations — Cross-talk or chat messages aren’t always captured
• Visual context — Slides being discussed, whiteboard sketches, screen shares

✅ Quick Check: After a meeting, Gemini’s notes say “Decided to proceed with the new vendor.” But you remember the team said “Let’s explore the vendor option further.” Is there a difference, and does it matter? (Answer: Big difference. “Decided to proceed” implies a final decision. “Explore further” means research and evaluation are still needed. Gemini sometimes interprets tentative language as definitive. Always review AI meeting notes for decisions — if something is ambiguous, clarify with attendees before acting on the AI’s interpretation.)

Meeting Notes Best Practices

Before the meeting:

• Share an agenda — Gemini organizes notes better with clear topics
• Enable recording/notes — not all meetings auto-enable this

During the meeting:

• State decisions explicitly: “For the record, we’re choosing Option A”
• Assign action items verbally: “Sarah, can you handle the vendor review by March 10?”
• Summarize before moving on: “So we agreed to X. Moving to the next topic…”

After the meeting:

• Review Gemini’s notes within 24 hours
• Correct any misinterpretations
• Share the edited notes with attendees

Practice Exercise

1. Open Google Slides and use Gemini to generate a 5-slide presentation on any topic
2. Select one slide’s text and ask Gemini to make it more concise
3. Ask Gemini to write speaker notes for your title slide
4. In your next Google Meet, enable “Take Notes with Gemini”
5. After the meeting, review the AI notes — note what it captured well and what it missed

Key Takeaways

• Gemini generates full presentation decks from detailed prompts — you edit rather than create
• Always provide real data in slide prompts — never let AI make up numbers for presentations
• AI images work for illustrations but not data visualizations — use them selectively
• Google Meet’s note-taking captures structure and explicit statements well
• Meeting notes miss nuance, implicit agreements, and tone — always review and edit
• State decisions and action items explicitly during meetings for better AI capture

Up Next

In the next lesson, you’ll explore Drive’s AI search and summarization, plus NotebookLM — Google’s tool for turning your documents into searchable knowledge bases and audio summaries.