Microsoft has just announced the general availability of the PowerPoint Presenter Coach feature. Designed to help you improve your presentation skills, it is now available on all the major platforms, including on the web, Windows, iOS, and Android, with support for Presenter Coach on Mac coming later this month.
As the name of the feature implies, the Presenter Coach uses artificial intelligence and can help coach you into practicing speeches or presentations. Microsoft says these skills are more important than ever since “meetings and presentations are happening more than before.” The company notes that features of Presenter Coach can help you “get feedback on your pace, use of monotone pitch, use of filler words, poor grammar, lack of originality, use of sensitive phrases.” You can try it today by downloading this template.
With that in mind, Microsoft has also rolled out three new critiques in Presenter Coach on PowerPoint for the web to go along with today’s general annocument. These features are generally intended to help you bit a bit more constructive.
The first of those features is body language. This uses your video camera to give you feedback on your body language such as a clear view of your face, your glances at the audience, and more. The second feature is designed to help you avoid using repetitive phrases by helping you find your most overused words. The final one is pronunciation. With this feature, the Presenter Coach can advise presenters on the correct pronunciation of words spoken throughout a rehearsal. It will the words it perceives may have been mispronounced.
But it doesn’t end there. Microsoft is suggesting ways for you to bolster your creativity and collaboration with the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite. More information is available here, but the reach involves first-party Teams meeting integrations, PowerPoint Presenter View in Teams, and more. There’s also Microsoft Whiteboard, which it says is seeing a 12x increase in monthly active users during the last period.
