How to use AI to prepare presentations that actually persuade

TLDR: An AI prompt based on Aristotle's Five Canons of Rhetoric can structure presentations for persuasion rather than just information, focusing on what the audience needs to believe rather than what you need to say.

Summary: The article discusses how most presentations fail because people prepare them by information rather than persuasion, asking "What do I need to say?" instead of "What do they need to believe?" The solution is based on Aristotle's Five Canons of Rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. Invention forces you to think about your audience's current beliefs and what they must believe by the end. Arrangement structures points for impact rather than logic. Style matches language to the audience. Memory identifies what you must know cold. Delivery covers pacing, pauses and presence. While these canons traditionally take time to work through manually, AI can walk you through all five in three minutes, making the framework usable for busy professionals. For teams and architects, this suggests using AI tools to structure technical presentations and proposals more effectively for persuasion.

Key takeaways:

Focus on what audience needs to believe rather than what you need to say
Use Aristotle's Five Canons of Rhetoric (invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery)
AI can process the framework in minutes rather than hours
Structure presentations for persuasion, not just information

Link: How to use AI to prepare presentations that actually persuade