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If there’s one thing worse than having to assemble a PowerPoint presentation, it’s being forced to sit through an achingly dull one conducted by someone else. So what if there were a better optiona way anyone, regardless of skill, could create a sleek and actually engaging slideshow that looks like a professional designer had a hand in it? If you ask Grant Lee, we’ve already reached the point where that’s possible. And it doesn’t end with presentations. Lee is the founder of an AI-centric startup called Gamma. You may not have heard of it yet, but 50 million people haveand are already using the service. That’s led the scrappy, 30-person company to reach a milestone of $50 million in annual recurring revenue a mere two years into its existence. “I realized just how important it was for people to be able to communicate their ideas in a visual way that others can consume,” Lee says. “Many of us have these ideas in our heads, but then to be able to actually convey that in a way that gets in other people’s headsit’s really hard.” Lee came to that realization while working in investment banking. He spent his days immersed in underwhelming, clunky-to-create slide decks. Now, he wants to make sure no one else is forced to dawdle their days away with those sorts of distractions. If you’ve wasted any amount of time wading through painfully bad presentationsor documents, websites, or social media postsGamma could be just the upgrade you never knew you needed. But, like most generative AI tools of the moment, it isn’t without its limitations. A broader approach to AI creation Let’s get one thing out of the way now: On the surface, Gamma seems an awful lot like another AI-centric startup I wrote about for Fast Company last yeara now-eight-year-old presentation-making service called Beautiful.ai. But while both services do aim to take the pain out of presentation creation, they differ not only in their philosophical foundations but also in the scope of what they offer. “All of these [other] tools actually have the same sort of approach, which is a design-first approach,” Lee says. “We’ve always taken a completely different approach, which is: What if we were design later, or even design last? What if we were content first?” To that end, Gamma encourages you to not even think about things from a visual perspective. Instead, you just focus on the message, and the tool transforms that into any medium and form you want. “You start with writing or an outline or existing notes, then we turn that into something that’s much more dynamic, with rich content that can be shareable,” Lee says. Specifically, when you launch a new project in Gamma, you’re presented with three choices. You can paste in textbe it a series of loose notes or a fully finished document; you can import an existing document, presentation, or slideshow from PowerPoint, Google Slides, or another similar program; or you can simply input a single-line prompt and have Gamma’s network of AI models take the reins from there. Gamma gives you three choices to start creating, all with AI at the core. “We don’t expect you to go in and try to move pixels around,” Lee explains. “We expect you to go in with your thoughts. We’re going to help you shape them [and] visualize them.” So, yes: You can drag and drop elements and adjust specific parameters around colors, styling, and so on. But the idea is that you don’t have to do that. Instead, you can let Gamma handle that heavy lifting while you focus entirely on what you want to saynot how you want to convey it. “We’re not trying to be incrementally better slide-ware,” Lee says. “We’re introducing a new set of building blocks.” Lee’s ultimate goal is to allow us, as humans, to focus solely on the content itself by leaning on AI to handle practically everything else. Even if Gamma’s creations are more of a starting point than a final, polished product, working with the framework it gives you is intended to be akin to editing a documentwith a handy virtual helper at your side every step of the way. Want to improve the writing, for instance? Tighten up your copy? Even just make some block of text more visually appealingor replace some existing images with more eye-catching illustrations? You’ll find one-step commands for all of those things within Gamma’s slide-by-slide AI menus. All you’ve gotta do is click. Gamma has all sorts of AI-powered tools for editing, refining, and improving your creations. “It’s as if you have your expert designer sitting right next to you,” Lee says. “At the end, you get a beautiful output, and regardless of your technical or design abilities, you feel like you have something you’re proud to present to others.” The million-dollar question, of course, is how well all of that actually works in practice. After all, nearly every AI tool sounds incredible on paper. But when you move beyond the carefully controlled demos and start actually trying to use this type of technology in the wild, it’s frequently far less impressive than it initially appears. The short answer wth Gamma is that it dependsboth on the type of input you’re providing and on your expectations for how, exactly, the service should operate. The ups and downs of the AI designer We’ll start with the not-so-good piece of the puzzle: When I’ve tried putting in already-created PDFs or presentations and asking Gamma to jazz them up for me, the results haven’t exactly been awe-inspiring. Here, for instance, is a peek at Gamma’s take on an existing media kit presentation I had for my independent newsletter-publishing business, The Intelligence: Gamma’s adaptation of my existing presentation isn’t especially great. It’s an awkward and ineffective interpretation of the original that honestly feels like a step in the wrong direction. Where Gamma has worked better, for me, has been when I start fresh. I give it a simple prompt, let it build a completely new framework on its own, and then use that as a starting point to fill in the actual info I want and finish things off from there. A simple prompt allows Gamma to create a fantastic starting framework. With that in mind, I tried to re-create that very same media kit from scratch, and the results were actually pretty decent. The specific information here isn’t at all accurate or even remotely related to reality, but it creates an interesting and attractive structure to use for adding in the right data and molding it into something sensible. Gamma’s made-from-scratch framework provides a much better starting point for a professional presentation. And even that part of the process can be pleasingly easywith Gamma offering a helping hand, as needed, to refine and polish everything from text to the layout itself as individual assets move around. All that AI effort does come at a cost, as you’d imagine. Gamma leans on a variety of generative AI engines to power its producteverything from OpenAI to Anthropic and Google’s Gemini technology, though the underlying logic automatically selects what it believes to be the best option for any given purpose, and you’re rarely aware of which model is being used when. Because of the expenses involved, Gamma’s free tier limits you to 400 AI credits per account and only basic AI image generation. For the full experience, you’ll need to pony up $96 a year for unlimited AI creation and advanced image accessor bump up to $180 a year for even more powerful capabilities. Long term, Lee believes Gamma will be able to provide enough value in exchange that the tradeoff will be a no-brainer. The Gamma vision So far, Lee says Gamma’s customers have primarily been a category of users he calls “prosumers”individuals or small teams that need to create a lot of visuals and wouldn’t typically have the resources to work with a full-fledged design team in their organizations. But he envisions a future in which everyone, from freelancers and small business owners to sales and marketing teams in larger companies, relies on Gamma to do what’d otherwise require a lot of time, effort, and aggravationeven when traditional resources are readily available. And you’d better believe that same principle applies to creating PDFs, websites, and social media assets as much as it does presentations (and Lee says the list of available formats will only expand from here). The humble, hated slide deck was just the easiest and most logical entry point to what Lee sees as an entire ecosystem of convenient content creationall with AI at its core. Gamma’s current lineup is only the start of what the service may eventually offer. “We chose slides as the sort of initial wedge because slides as a format is ubiquitous,” he says. “[But] knowledge workers don’t just need to create slides. They actually have a need to create all forms of content.” Lee sees it all as a sliding scale with lots of blurred lines. At the end of the day, what’s really the difference between a presentation and a PDF? Or a PDF and a website? Or a website and a promotional LinkedIn post? Once you start relying on Gamma to help you create anything and everything, you quickly realize the various formats all share the same basic building blocks. And it doesn’t take much to move from one to the next. “Our bet is that presentations can always just be the gateway,” he explains. “We don’t want our users tohave to think about it in a traditional senselike, Oh, I’m creating a slide deck. It’s more, I’m creating a piece of content, and that can be consumed in different ways. The challenge, then, is getting peopleand organizationsto break their habits and inch away from the uninspiring but familiar tools they’ve relied on for ages. And by making Gamma so simple to use that it requires virtually no specific skills or training, Lee’s optimistic he can win over crowds and frame the service as the one-stop shop for anything creative. “A tool like Gamma is trying to lower the floor so any knowledge worker can pick up skills that they couldn’t have imagined being able to do in the past,” he says. “We really believe that’ll open up doors for them.” Be the first to find all sorts of interesting tech tools with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. You’ll get a single new off-the-beaten-path discovery in your inbox every Wednesday!
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Influencers often face more negativity than most people experience in a lifetimeand with that comes a significant mental health toll. Now, a new therapy service has been launched specifically for content creators. CreatorCare, cofounded by digital creator Shira Lazar and backed by Creators 4 Mental Health and Revive Health Therapy, aims to break down both financial and systemic barriers to mental health care. While some creators earn millions of dollars, many struggle to make ends meet. To ensure therapy is accessible to all, CreatorCare offers sliding-scale rates starting at $60, with or without insurance. Launched initially in California, with plans for national expansion, the program provides licensed and associate therapists in person and via telehealth. These professionals specialize in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and mindfulness-based therapy. With more than 200 million creators worldwide, the mental strain of this profession is often overlooked. Behind the scenes, creators deal with online abuse, constant pressure to stay relevant, and financial instabilitychallenges that rarely receive public sympathy. Discussions around burnout are frequently met with dismissive remarks urging influencers to get a real 9-to-5 job. But the numbers tell a different story. A 2023 Awin & ShareASale Influencer Survey found that nearly 80% of creators reported burnout, and 66% said it directly impacted their mental health. Nearly half rely on alternative income streams to reduce the pressure. Lazar, host of the talk show Whats Trending, is now helping to build a safety net for creators. The creator economy has exploded but the support systems havent kept up, she told Passionfruit. As more Gen Z step into this space professionally, we need to treat it like the real workplace it is. That means sustainable systems not just for monetization, but for mental health, too. Amy Kelly, cofounder of CreatorCare and CEO of Revive Health Therapy, echoed that sentiment: Social media is not just a platformits a recruiter,” she said, noting that 57% of Gen Z teens in the U.S. say they would become influencers if given the chance. Were grooming teens into a digital workforce with proven mental health hazardsthe modern equivalent of sending kids into coal mines without protective gear. CreatorCare isnt the only initiative addressing creators well-being. SAG-AFTRAs new influencer committee aims to expand labor protections, while the National Association of Broadcasters recently launched a Creator Council to amplify creators voices. The Creators Guild of America also released a contract rider to safeguard creators in brand partnerships. Because, yes, content creation is a real job.
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If someone driving a new version of a Subaru Forester crashes into a cyclist, an airbag will immediately inflate on the hood to help protect the person on the bike. The SUV, which offers the feature only on vehicles sold in Japan, isnt the first Subaru to include an external airbag. The company started including pedestrian protection airbags on its Japanese cars nearly a decade ago. But the brand says the new design is the first in the world intended to also protect cyclists. Its a basic, commonsense idea. Airbags have been proven to be effective to protect the occupants in a vehicle, says Ben Crowther, policy director for America Walks, a nonprofit focused on walkability and safety. And theres plenty of testing to show that the same is true for people outside vehicles. The Foresters hood is also designed to have as few hard parts as possible, and to easily deform to help cushion the impact of a crash. But the bottom edge of the windshield and the pillars that go up to the roof have to stay rigid because theyre part of the frame. When a pedestrian is hit by a car, head injuries are most likely in those placesand thats where Subarus U-shaped airbag can help. In a crash, the cyclist usually ends up higher on the windshield. That’s why the company redesigned its airbag to cover a larger area. The system deploys when sensors detect a certain amount of pressure on the front bumper. The vehicle has a suite of other safety features. When a driver turns on the turn signal at a corner, for example, the headlights light up an area diagonally in front, making it easier to spot pedestrians or cyclists on the road. A set of three cameras and radar offer a wider-angle view than in the brand’s previous cars, so it’s more likely to spot other road users. The vehicle also aims to reduce blind spots in all directions. These are all efforts toward Subaru’s goal to have no traffic deaths involving its cars by 2030. Of course, it’s possible to go even furtherone of the best ways to make vehicles safer is to make them smaller. Beyond car design, infrastructure also obviously matters: With separated bike lanes, for example, a crash is less likely in the first place. Speed limits are critical. If youre a pedestrian who gets hit by a car going 20 mph, one study found that you have a 5% chance of being killed. If the car is going 30 mph, that chance jumps to 45%. At 40 mph, the pedestrians chance of being killed is roughly 80%. (Japan has lower average speed limits than the U.S., along with other policies that support pedestrian safety, and much lower fatality rates for pedestrians and cyclists in traffic accidents.) External airbags aren’t a panacea, but they can help. It’s probably unlikely, though, that they’ll show up in the U.S. anytime soon, especially as automakers are already struggling to deal with increased manufacturing costs because of tariffs. And while the Biden administration was working on safety issues related to vehicle design, it’s not clear what will happen with policy now. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy “has certainly touted safety as something that his U.S. DOT wants to pursue,” Crowther says. “But there’s a lot of mixed messages, particularly through the reducing in staff at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” The cuts at NHTSA made by the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year disproportionately affected employees working on vehicle safety, according to reports.
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