How AI Transformed My Public Speaking Prep

Let me start by sharing a little secret: I’m still pretty new to the world of public speaking. I’m heading into what will be my twelfth or thirteenth speaking engagement, with three different conferences lined up over the next three months. Despite how green I am, something interesting has happened recently. My prep time is shrinking—fast.

And no, it’s not just because I’m incorporating AI into every corner of my workflow (although that definitely helps). It’s also thanks to good ol’ fashioned practice and experience. Every time I stand in front of an audience, I get better at understanding how to translate my ideas into something that resonates. But I’m a process-driven person at heart, and I noticed a huge time suck that I think a lot of speakers—both new and experienced—grapple with.

The Real Time Suck in Public Speaking

When preparing for a talk, there’s so much to do besides actually crafting your message and practicing its delivery. I used to spend hours tweaking PowerPoint slides, polishing follow-up materials, wrestling with design templates, and figuring out how to push content on social media. If you don’t have a team around you, all that administrative and creative production can eat up days of your life. But let’s be honest—spending all that time on formatting slides or writing social media captions doesn’t always produce true value for your audience.

The real value? That’s in the delivery. It’s how you connect with people, how your story flows, how your energy and ideas come across. The best part of public speaking, and arguably the hardest part, is how you communicate your message in a way that sticks.

Putting AI to Work (So I Can Focus on What Matters)

Here’s where the magic of AI comes in. Tools like Gamma, NotebookLM, Descript, ChatGPT (and a few others I’ve been tinkering with) have freed up a ton of my mental space—time and energy that I can now pour into refining how I share my vision.

But there’s a key piece here: I make sure these tools support my authentic voice. If you feed AI random internet data, you’ll get a generic-sounding result. Instead, I’ve trained these tools on my own words, my own thought process, my unique style. That way, when the AI hands me a draft social media post or a follow-up document, it sounds like me—because it’s built on a database of my actual words and ideas.

Reclaiming Time to Think, Create, and Deliver

I’ve been planning one of my upcoming presentations for nine months now, but most of that time hasn’t been spent on slides or docs. It’s been spent on thinking—on learning, designing, experimenting, and talking with real mentors and what I like to call “synthetic thought partners,” a.k.a. AI. These digital sidekicks help me shape my ideas, not replace them.

And with just ten days to go, I can sit down with my cup of coffee, fire up my AI workflow, and in a few clicks, generate polished materials for my entire presentation. That includes follow-up content and social posts for before and after the event. Best part? It still sounds exactly like me because, in a sense, it is me.

Staying True to My Voice (Minus the Filler Work)

One of my favorite parts of this process is the amount of creative freedom it gives me. I’m an out-of-the-box thinker, and I love brainstorming unique ways to engage an audience. Some of these ideas are great; others, not so much. But by having AI capture my thought process—recording me when I practice, compiling my words, and turning them into materials—I cut out the repetitive busywork.

I don’t use fancy props. I just use my voice, a solid knowledge bank, and a systematic approach to harnessing AI. Because I don’t spend my precious hours designing slides or fussing with formatting, I can devote myself fully to perfecting the delivery—the real star of public speaking.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, AI isn’t doing the presenting for me. It’s freeing me up to focus on what I do best: connecting with people, sharing my insights, and telling my story in the most human way possible. The slides, the social media posts, the follow-up materials—they’re important, but they’re not the heart of what makes a keynote or workshop memorable.

If you find yourself getting bogged down by all the tasks that come with speaking engagements—whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned pro—I encourage you to explore how AI can lighten that load. Make it work for your authentic voice. Don’t just feed it random data using pre-defined prompts; feed it your data. Turn AI into a tool that amplifies your words rather than diluting them.

Because, trust me, the more time you invest in the actual art of presenting— honing your message, refining your style, building genuine relationships with your audience—the more unforgettable you’ll be on stage. And that, my friends, is what public speaking is all about.

Thank you for reading, and here’s to delivering more impactful presentations—with a little help from our synthetic friends.