Multimodal Presentation

A multimodal presentation blends multiple formats—text, images, video, and clickable, interactive elements—into a single presentation. Until now, "presentation" mostly meant slides that flip through text and pictures in a fixed order. This term describes something that adds short video clips or elements the audience can click and interact with.

Think of the difference between a paper book and a tablet app. A paper book shows only text and illustrations in a set order, but a tablet app can play video, let you swipe or zoom into images, and even show different content to different viewers. A multimodal presentation aims for the same thing: a single presentation that can be edited differently depending on the viewer's interests or situation, with no fixed format.

The term isn't yet an official product name from any specific company. As AI's ability to handle multiple forms of information at once—not just text but images, video, and more—has advanced, this phrase is used to describe the trend of presentations breaking out of the slide format to incorporate this variety of media together.

The term appears in coverage noting that after acquiring Rica, Gamma said it would "build fluid, multimodal presentations and other ways of communicating together." A common misreading here is to assume this names a specific upcoming Gamma product, but in fact only the direction has been stated, and no concrete product form has been revealed.

When making a text-only presentation, try asking an AI tool something like this to get a feel for what a multimodal presentation is like:

Example prompt: "Turn the following content into slides. For each slide, keep the key sentence short and pair it with a fitting image, and wrap up the final slide with a short video or animation summary."

Asking this way gets you a result that mixes in images and video elements instead of just listing text.