AI simplifies PPT creation.

Author: Huashang Taolue | Zhang Jingbo

In 1987, the American software company Forethought invented PowerPoint, rewriting history.

Since then, PowerPoint has swept the globe, becoming an indispensable tool in various office settings like meetings, reports, and product demonstrations, as well as educational scenarios like classroom teaching and academic presentations. It has emerged as one of the most vital productivity tools.

However, for many, creating PowerPoint presentations is a tedious and mentally exhausting task. Decades after its inception, PowerPoint has been criticized for being time-consuming and labor-intensive.

From outlining content to searching for templates, gathering and organizing images, and finally struggling with layout and design, PowerPoint creation is a complex process requiring a high level of content quality and a certain learning curve.

Data shows that nearly 30% of users experience negative emotions like frustration, anxiety, and anger during PowerPoint creation, leading many to exclaim, "The world has suffered from PowerPoint for too long!"

Despite software vendors continuously iterating to improve user efficiency, this challenge has remained difficult to overcome. However, the advent of large language models has ushered in a productivity revolution in the traditional PowerPoint field.

[It Continues to Dominate the Charts!]

In 2020, three young entrepreneurs founded Gamma in Silicon Valley, aiming to optimize PowerPoint creation with AI. In 2021, they officially opened beta testing, initiating a new era of smart PowerPoint.

In China, it is Baidu, with its deep expertise in AI, that has truly broken through the traditional PowerPoint experience and efficiency ceiling.

In May 2023, Baidu's founder, chairman, and CEO Robin Li pointed out that Baidu aims to be the first company to reconstruct all its products using large language models and AI-native thinking. Among these, Baidu Wenku is a top priority.

Over the past year, Baidu Wenku has undergone a comprehensive reconstruction powered by large language models and quickly emerged as a leader in the smart PowerPoint space.

According to a report by Aurora Mobile's Yuehu Data, as of June 2024, Baidu Wenku's market share in the smart PowerPoint industry has reached 80%.

In February this year, the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center released the "Large Language Model Empowering Smart Office Evaluation Report - PPT Generation," which showed that Baidu Wenku topped the list with a score of 86, achieving a significant lead and ranking first in four out of five indicators: generation quality, intent understanding, layout and beautification, and trusted protection. This positions Baidu Wenku firmly in the first tier of large language model-based PowerPoint products.

A new industry often attracts numerous participants, resulting in a low market concentration. However, in the smart PowerPoint space, Baidu Wenku has effectively secured a winning position.

While maintaining a substantial market share lead, what sets Baidu Wenku's smart PowerPoint apart?

After comparing several smart PowerPoint products, I found that Baidu Wenku has established high barriers in terms of generation methods, content quality, and even AI editing.

Firstly, Baidu Wenku supports the most diverse PowerPoint generation methods. With just a single sentence input, users can instantly create a PowerPoint presentation featuring rich content, exquisite design, and precise imagery.

Additionally, Baidu Wenku supports various PowerPoint generation methods, including uploading images or photos, merging multiple documents, creating from mind maps, specifying page numbers, and generating from internal documents, catering to the diverse needs of industries like finance, automotive, digitalization, education, government affairs, and knowledge sharing.

Even without manual input, leveraging cross-modal capabilities, users can simply speak a voice command in the Baidu Wenku app, instructing the large language model to generate a PowerPoint presentation for them. In contrast, most vendors can only generate PowerPoint presentations based on commands and documents, lacking these advanced capabilities.

In terms of generation quality, Baidu Wenku's smart PowerPoint also leads the industry.

Taking imagery as an example, Baidu Wenku's smart PowerPoint achieves industry-leading levels of content matching and accuracy for images. In contrast, many vendors forego image inclusion due to inadequate imagery capabilities.

This advantage stems from Baidu's expertise in search, making imagery integration effortless. Additionally, Baidu's foundational large language model accurately understands user intent.

Furthermore, targeting different users, Baidu Wenku uniquely supports user-uploaded templates and custom templates, better aligning with PPT creation needs in various scenarios like corporate and educational settings. Coupled with its vast and real-time updated PPT template library, Baidu Wenku offers the highest level of customization and compatibility across the industry.

After PowerPoint generation, Baidu Wenku's smart PowerPoint offers extensive editing capabilities, including basic layout and beautification, one-click replacement of colors, fonts, and templates, as well as free insertion of charts, tables, and modification of images through commands. It also supports conversion and generation of various formats like mind maps, speeches, and industry research reports.

Many of Baidu Wenku's industry-first innovations in smart PowerPoint surpass the capabilities of most competitors in the field.

[Why Does Baidu Wenku Stand Out in Smart PowerPoint?]

In the realm of document creation, PowerPoint may not be the most frequently used tool, yet why has Baidu Wenku invested heavily and emerged as a leader?

This achievement stems from the profound understanding and insight of the Baidu Wenku team into user needs.

In the view of Wang Ying, Vice President of Baidu and Head of the Wenku Business Unit, PowerPoint presents several distinct characteristics:

First, it is a rigid demand. PowerPoint is an essential skill for professionals and students alike, with no viable substitute. Unlike pure text, which can be written in Word, WPS, or even a notepad, PowerPoint serves a unique purpose.

Second, PowerPoint creation is challenging and has a high threshold. Compared to other content creation tasks, PowerPoint production involves a lengthy process, from brainstorming, finding templates, organizing content frameworks, to image selection, layout, and beautification. This complex process spans multiple platforms, making it difficult for beginners.

"The greater the difficulty, the higher the threshold. Being an early adopter makes it challenging for competitors to match your quality," observes Wang Ying.

Third, PowerPoint's quality is readily apparent. While evaluating the quality of written content involves subjective factors, the merits of a PowerPoint presentation are immediately discernible. A good PowerPoint should have a clear theme, structured outline, logical flow, informative content, and relevant imagery that enhances understanding. Conversely, a poor PowerPoint lacks these elements.

This precise analysis of user needs has driven Baidu Wenku's early investment in the smart PowerPoint space in China.

Furthermore, over a decade of accumulated expertise in content and technology Empower Baidu Wenku with many other intelligences PPT Advantages that the product does not possess .

Content-wise, Baidu Wenku, established 15 years ago, boasts a valuable document repository of 1.2 billion high-quality documents, providing a unique professional content backbone for smart PowerPoint. Notably, Baidu Wenku covers over 95% of domestic academic journals and 80% of foreign academic titles, with over 100 million specialized content items from authoritative institutions across legal, educational, and industry reports, achieving over 90% content coverage.

Simultaneously, Baidu Wenku maintains long-term partnerships with over 55,000 authoritative institutions, ensuring the accuracy and continuous supply of generated content through its 420 million copyrighted, specialized content items.

Technologically, Baidu Wenku leverages Baidu's ERNIE Bot large language model, boasting domestic industry-leading computing power and cross-modal, full-stack, and full-scenario capabilities.

Moreover, the introduction of large language models has revolutionized product logic, necessitating a shift from traditional workflows. Product development teams must now bridge the gap between users and large language models.

"In the past, without large language models, technical maturity drove the process, where product managers conducted research, wrote product documentation, and then engaged technical teams," explains Wang Ying. In contrast, the large language model era necessitates parallel progress, matching user needs while adapting models for optimal performance.

For instance, the foundational large language model precisely understands user intent, while fine-tuned, variously sized models execute specific functions. Baidu Wenku employs a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model, efficiently allocating and invoking multiple models to generate cross-modal, cross-format content, delivering end-to-end user-specific products.

From the Wenku team's profound insight into user needs to rapid innovation in technology and product development, Baidu Wenku has reconstructed the PowerPoint industry with large language models, transforming the traditional space and achieving industry leadership.

[One-Stop Solution, Making Everyone a Creation Master]

Behind Baidu Wenku's continuous breakthroughs in smart PowerPoint lies a profound understanding of the AI creation industry.

According to Wang Ying, Baidu Wenku aims to be a "one-stop AI content acquisition and creation platform." This positioning stems from both user needs and Baidu's capabilities.

Initially, Baidu Wenku was known as a document retrieval platform, where users sought high-quality documents across industries. However, Baidu Wenku observed that users' ultimate goal was creation, spanning diverse scenarios like learning and office work, family education, and part-time earning.

Baidu Wenku's core user groups include students and professionals, both with intense and frequent creation needs, fostering strong product loyalty and willingness to pay. In learning and office scenarios, this translates to productivity tools. In family education, it means supporting children's learning and exposure to diverse worlds. For part-time earners, it involves content creation like writing novels or drawing comics to supplement income.

Technologically, one of the key strengths of large language models is creation, and Baidu's ERNIE Bot model excels in understanding Chinese. Combining users' strong creation needs with Baidu's capabilities, the shift from pure content acquisition to a one-stop AI content acquisition and creation platform was a natural progression for Baidu Wenku.

Yet, Baidu Wenku aspires to be more than a traditional AI creation platform. It aims to empower users to create any type or format of content with AI, anytime, anywhere. Wang Ying likens it to a bread machine: "Give me any ingredients, and I'll turn them into what you want, as you envision it."

In the past, creation was complex, requiring users to integrate information in their minds before starting on a blank page. Different tools and platforms were necessary for various content types, often time-consuming and laborious. Now, Baidu Wenku's AI simplifies the entire content creation process, significantly lowering the barrier to entry.

Baidu Wenku boasts over a hundred multi-modal AI capabilities, including smart PowerPoint generation, document generation, mind map creation, research report generation, image-to-text generation, smart sketchbooks, smart comics, smart novels, and full-scenario command editing. It has amassed 180 million AI users, with over 2.2 billion AI function uses. According to the latest AI Product Rankings, Baidu Wenku's AI functions ranked first domestically in April, May, and June 2024, achieving a three-month winning streak.

Beyond smart PowerPoint, Baidu Wenku has established a dominant position in the AI creation space.

Several factors contribute to this success. Firstly, early adopters often enjoy a first-mover advantage in the large language model era. Receiving user feedback first allows for quicker product iteration, accelerating the pace and widening the lead, creating a Matthew Effect.

However, iteration speed is not Baidu Wenku's ultimate goal. User experience ultimately determines product success. "We strive to deliver real, reliable value to users in this industry, fully satisfying their needs and freeing them from tedious work," says Wang Ying.

So, what ideal AI product do users desire? After comprehensive reconstruction with large language models, Baidu Wenku paints a picture of possibilities.

It addresses problems end-to-end, emulating human thinking in machines and enabling products to function like humans. In the process of product reconstruction, Baidu Wenku pursues this direction, offering vast information and resources as an inexhaustible source of creative material for users.

Simultaneously, it serves as an AI-powered, fully automated operating system and an intelligent companion available round-the-clock, in all scenarios. Like a bread machine in every creator's home, it empowers everyone to become a master of creation. In this sense, Baidu Wenku advances towards the ideal form of AI products in the large language model era, ushering in greater imagination and possibilities.

[Reference Materials]

[1] Exclusive Interview with Wang Ying, Vice President of Baidu and Head of the Wenku Business Unit, by Huashang Taolue

[2] "2024 Smart PPT Industry Market Analysis" by Aurora Mobile Big Data

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