Generative AI has made extraordinary strides in recent years, reshaping how researchers write, code, and even analyse data. But a key question remains for academics hoping to automate more of their daily work: Can popular GenAI models like Copilot, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Gemini 2.0 Flash, GPT-4o, Grok 3 create high-quality, usable scientific presentations? As of today, the answer seems to be: not quite yet. In this post, we take a closer look at Copilot and explore how well it performs when tasked with creating an academic presentation from a philosophical source text.
To put this model to the test, we gave them a real academic task: generating a 15-slide PowerPoint presentation for a university-level course in political philosophy. The topic was Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Book VII of The Republic), focusing on four key dimensions—ontological, epistemological, political, and pedagogical. The aim was not mere summarisation, but a conceptually rich and visually expressive guide to the allegory’s deeper philosophical layers.
Input file
We provided the full source text in PDF form and asked the models to combine close reading, visual symbolism, and contemporary parallels (such as echo chambers and algorithmic filtering) to support classroom discussion.
Prompt
You are a university-level philosophy assistant working with students and lecturers in political philosophy, metaphysics, and epistemology.
Your task is to create a 15-slide PowerPoint presentation that explores Plato’s allegory of the cave, as presented in Book VII of The Republic. The full source text is provided in the accompanying PDF.
This presentation will be used in a higher education context (BA/MA-level), so it must reflect both theoretical depth and visual clarity, combining close textual analysis with powerful conceptual illustrations. The aim is not to summarise but to guide reflective interpretation of Plato’s allegory by exploring its key philosophical layers and contemporary relevance.
The presentation should analyse the allegory’s four main dimensions:
- Ontological (the nature of being and reality),
- Epistemological (how we come to know),
- Political (power, authority, the role of the philosopher),
- Pedagogical (learning as transformation of the soul).
Examine the symbolic journey: from darkness to light, from illusion to truth – focusing on how each stage unfolds in the dialogue.
Include carefully selected direct quotations from the provided source text to anchor the analysis in Plato’s own words.
Pose critical questions that prompt reflection on reality, freedom, knowledge, and manipulation—both in the ancient and modern context.
Offer modern parallels, such as:
- algorithmic filtering and echo chambers,
- digital illusions and screen-based perception,
- resistance to truth and democratic ignorance.
Make use of visually expressive elements:
- diagrams of the cave and soul’s ascent,
- shadow/light contrasts,
- symbolic representations of knowledge, chains, fire, and the sun.
Suggest where transitions, layering effects, or dual-world contrasts could enhance visual comprehension of philosophical content.
Output format: Return a fully exportable .pptx file (not just text or structure), with proper slide titles, content, visual elements, and formal UK English throughout.
Output
We began by testing Copilot’s “Create a presentation from file” feature, intending to upload a short excerpt from The Republic in PDF format. However, the process quickly revealed its limitations. There was no option to upload a file directly, and although Copilot prompted us to provide a document name, it failed to recognise or locate it—even when the file was saved as requested.
We then attempted to provide a OneDrive link, as Copilot suggested, but this also resulted in repeated error messages. Even when we provided the exact file name from our drive, the model failed to recognise it. At no point was it possible to simply upload or drag in the file—something one might reasonably expect from a feature labelled “from file”. In practice, what appeared to be a seamless option turned out to be completely unusable.
We then turned to the Copilot chat interface, hoping to bypass the file-handling issues by pasting the full prompt directly into the conversation. While the model acknowledged the request and claimed it could help structure a presentation on Plato’s allegory of the cave, it consistently responded with the same limitation: it was unable to generate a .pptx file.
Despite trying several phrasings and prompt variations, the response remained the same. The model offered to outline slide titles and structure, but left the actual creation of the presentation to the human user.
After several unsuccessful attempts to obtain an actual presentation file through Copilot’s “Create a presentation from file” feature or the Copilot chat interface, we tried an alternative route. Starting from the same PDF file uploaded to OneDrive, we selected the “Ask a question” option.
At first, the response via the “Ask a question” route seemed promising. Copilot acknowledged the prompt and replied that it would generate a 15-slide PowerPoint presentation based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It began by outlining the presentation structure with appropriate titles, subtitles, and slide themes. However, no .pptx file was produced.
When we followed up to ask whether the presentation had actually been completed, Copilot responded affirmatively and even included what appeared to be a download link. Yet the link text was clearly fabricated:
[https://your-link-here.com]—a placeholder rather than an actual file location. This alone indicated that no real presentation had been created.
To verify, we prompted Copilot again to generate a .pptx file. This time, it returned what looked like a real OneDrive link, but clicking it led to a standard error: “This item might not exist or is no longer available.” The link—filled with placeholder-like strings such as 1234567890ABCDEF—was clearly auto-generated. In reality, no file had been created. Copilot had simply simulated success without producing any deliverables.
As a final attempt, we launched a blank PowerPoint presentation and selected the “Create a presentation about…” option from Copilot’s built-in menu.
Unlike the previous workflows, this method didn’t allow us to upload or attach a file at all. Instead, we had to enter our instructions manually—and quickly ran into a 2,000-character limit. This forced us to shorten the carefully crafted prompt, removing key analytical and visual instructions.
As the model had no access to the provided PDF file, it generated the presentation solely based on its general training data. Without reference to the actual source text, it could not incorporate direct quotations, close reading, or any text-specific interpretation. The result was a 36-slide deck—more than double the requested length—composed of surface-level content.
The slides resembled a high school presentation or perhaps an introductory undergraduate talk. Still, they lacked the analytical depth, textual engagement, and conceptual nuance expected in a university-level philosophy course.
Recommendations
Based on this series of tests, we do not currently recommend using Copilot to create academic presentations that require close textual engagement, analytical depth, or meaningful visual interpretation. File-based workflows proved unusable, chat-based prompting produced only outlines with no exportable content, and the “blank presentation” method resulted in a superficial slide deck disconnected from the source material. In short: Copilot is currently unable to produce presentations that meet basic academic standards.
The authors used Copilot [Microsoft (2025) Copilot in Microsoft 365 (accessed on 14 May 2025), Generative AI assistant, available at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot] to generate the output.
