Sep 3, 2026 # AI Presentation API: Alai Modern Slides API for Slides, Posters and Infographics Krishna Gupta Founder, Alai Krishna Gupta is the founder of Alai, an AI presentation platform he has spent five years building from scratch. He has worked with more than 120,000 users to understand how people create, design, and improve presentations. He writes about presentation workflows, product design, and practical uses of AI. **Quick answer:** Alai Modern Slides API is an **AI presentation API**, but the name is now narrower than the product. The Modern API can create presentations, infographics, carousels, posters, and social posts. It gives developers API access to Alai's highest-quality design-generation workflow, with published design systems, supported model choice including `z-ai/glm-5.2`, natural-language edits, asset uploads, and export to PDF, editable PowerPoint, or PNG. The first version of this launch post framed Alai too narrowly, as if Modern Slides were only a deck API and tools like Canva or Gamma were better whenever the output moved beyond slides. That was the wrong comparison. Modern is not "slides only." The public [Create Presentation docs](https://docs.getalai.com/modern/create-presentation) list supported artifact formats as `presentation`, `infographic`, `carousel`, `poster`, and `social_post`. So the real launch is this: Alai's Modern API makes high-quality, design-system-driven visual generation programmable. Slides are one artifact. Posters, infographics, carousels, and social posts are part of the same direction. ## Modern builds on Classic and Creative, it does not replace them Alai already had Classic and Creative Slides APIs. Modern is not a reset. It builds on that product family. Classic Slides are built from Alai's curated elements and responsive layouts. They are useful when you want structured, presentation-specific components that can be moved, resized, and adjusted predictably. Creative Slides use state-of-the-art image models for expressive visuals and dedicated AI editing controls. Those workflows still matter. Modern adds a new layer: slides and visual artifacts that match an exact template or brand style, remain fully editable with AI, and can be generated against published design systems. In the API, that shows up through `/api/modern/v1`, `design_system_id`, supported model selection, semantically labeled assets, edit operations, and export operations. Alai's product picker shows Modern alongside Creative, Classic, and Mixed. Modern is the higher-fidelity design-system workflow, not a replacement for the existing API family. The practical reason this matters is migration. If your integration already depends on Classic or Creative request shapes, you do not need to throw them away. Keep using the older endpoints when those workflows fit. Use Modern when the job requires stronger visual quality, exact brand or template style, model choice, precise iteration, and broader design formats. ## Modern is a design API, not only a deck API The phrase "AI presentation API" is still the search term people use, so it is the right URL for this page. But the capability is broader than a traditional presentation endpoint. A modern business workflow rarely produces only one deck. A launch may need an investor update, a carousel, a poster, a product infographic, and social posts. A sales workflow may need a proposal deck plus a one-page follow-up visual. A research workflow may need a briefing deck and an infographic summary. Treating those as unrelated product categories is increasingly artificial. Modern's supported artifact formats make that explicit: | Artifact format | What it is useful for | | --- | --- | | `presentation` | Pitch decks, sales decks, QBRs, board updates, training decks, and executive briefings. | | `infographic` | Research summaries, process diagrams, data explainers, and visual reports. | | `carousel` | LinkedIn or Instagram-style multi-page stories, thought-leadership posts, and repurposed deck narratives. | | `poster` | Campaign visuals, event assets, classroom materials, and internal announcements. | | `social_post` | Standalone social graphics and channel-specific visual communication. | That changes the comparison with Canva and Gamma. The reason to use Alai is not that it only does presentations. The reason to use Alai is that it brings Alai's design quality, editability, model choice, and API workflow to high-quality visual artifacts. ## Model choice is a cost and quality advantage Claude Design is tied to Claude's model surface. Many visual AI products hide model selection almost entirely. Modern exposes model choice as an API primitive. The [Modern models docs](https://docs.getalai.com/modern/models) say developers should call `GET /models` because availability can differ by account and change over time. The current public schema lists OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Moonshot, Z.AI, and other model IDs, including `z-ai/glm-5.2`. This matters economically. You should not have to pay for the most expensive model path every time the job does not require it. For some artifacts, a model like GLM-5.2 may get you the quality you need at a cheaper price. For other artifacts, a premium model may still be the right choice. The point is that Modern lets the application choose deliberately instead of inheriting one fixed model decision from a product surface. That is a serious developer advantage. AI design generation is not one workload. A dense enterprise deck, a poster, an infographic, and a short carousel have different cost, latency, and reasoning needs. ## Why use Modern instead of Claude Design? The first comparison should not be "which one can make something pretty?" Both workflows can produce polished visual work. The better question is whether you need a product surface or an API. Anthropic describes [Claude Design](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-design-anthropic-labs) as a research-preview visual creation product for designs, prototypes, slides, one-pagers, pitch decks, and related work. That is useful for a human working inside Claude. Modern is different because the workflow can be embedded. A product can select a design system, upload assets, choose a supported model, generate a visual artifact, poll progress, request precise edits, and export. That is what a developer needs when design generation becomes part of another product. Collaboration is not the argument I would make for Alai today. If your primary requirement is multi-user review, comments, approvals, and shared editing, verify that directly in whichever product you are evaluating. The stronger Modern argument is API access, high-quality output, model choice, cost control, precise iteration, and editable exports. ## Why use Modern instead of Gamma or Canva? Gamma and Canva are strong products, but the old framing was wrong: they are not better just because they support broader visual work. Modern supports broader artifact formats too. Gamma is compelling when the workflow is web-native, multi-format, and human-facing. Canva is compelling when a team wants Canva's mature editor, templates, stock content, and existing design ecosystem. Those are valid reasons to use them. But if you want to create high-quality designs through an API and then iterate precisely using Alai, Modern is the more direct path. You get artifact formats beyond slides, published design systems, model choice, assets, edit operations, async status, and export endpoints. That is the comparison that matters for developers. ## What "high quality at a cheaper price" actually means The model menu is not a decorative feature. It changes the economics of design generation. If every request has to run through one premium model, the pricing model is blunt. You pay the same style of model cost for a hard enterprise deck, a simple poster, a social post, and a lightweight carousel. That is rarely how production workloads behave. Some artifacts need the strongest reasoning and visual planning available. Others need a fast, cheaper model that still reaches the quality bar for the job. Modern's model endpoint lets developers discover what is available to the account and choose deliberately. The current schema lists options such as `openai/gpt-5.6-sol`, `openai/gpt-5.6-terra`, `anthropic/claude-opus-4.8`, `google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview`, `moonshotai/kimi-k2.6`, and `z-ai/glm-5.2`. The right implementation should not hard-code that list forever, but the point is clear: Alai is not limited to one model family. That gives teams a practical route to cost control. Use GLM-5.2 or another cheaper supported model where it produces the design quality your workflow needs. Use a more expensive model where the extra reasoning, structure, or instruction-following is worth the cost. This is not a fake benchmark claim that one model always matches another. It is the product architecture that lets customers find the quality-cost point that works for each artifact type. ## Why someone would use Modern for high-quality designs The obvious reason to use Modern is not that it can technically output many formats. The reason is that Alai has spent years building around presentation and visual design quality: hierarchy, composition, brand style, editability, and the messy revision loop after a first draft. For posters and infographics, that matters just as much as it does for slides. A poster with the wrong hierarchy is noise. An infographic that flattens the argument into decorative shapes is not useful. A carousel that looks fine on page one but loses visual rhythm by page six is not finished work. Modern is valuable because it brings the same design-system and iteration machinery to these artifacts, not because it adds another output label. The precise-iteration loop is the other reason. In a normal image-generation workflow, a small edit can become a full regeneration. In a broad design editor, the user may have to manually repair the layout after every AI change. Modern is meant to let users keep asking for design changes through Alai while preserving an editable artifact. That is the workflow customers actually need: generate a strong draft, point at what is wrong, revise it, and keep moving toward a final deliverable. ## What Modern does not have yet The missing piece to be honest about is collaboration. Modern should not be sold today as a collaboration-first review system. If a buyer's main requirement is multi-user commenting, approval flows, shared editing, or enterprise review workflows, they should verify that directly in the product they are evaluating. I would not make collaboration the reason to choose Alai over Claude Design, Gamma, or Canva. The stronger reason is different: high-quality design generation, design-system control, model choice, cheaper model routing when quality holds up, precise AI iteration, asset support, and exportable artifacts. Collaboration can come later. The product claim today should be sharp enough without pretending that missing workflow is already solved. ## The workflow developers should build A practical Modern integration looks like this: 1. Pick the artifact format: presentation, infographic, carousel, poster, or social post. 2. Select the published design system or brand style that should govern the output. 3. Upload logos, screenshots, reference images, content images, or backgrounds. 4. Choose the supported model that fits the quality, latency, and cost target. 5. Generate through the async operation flow. 6. Use natural-language edits to refine the artifact precisely. 7. Export the result to the format the user needs. This is where Alai has a real product point of view. The API should not only wrap a model. It should expose the pieces that make a visual artifact usable after generation. ## Bottom line Modern Slides API is better described as Alai's programmable high-quality design generation layer. It happens to be searched for as an AI presentation API, and presentations remain a major use case, but the API supports more than decks. It builds on Classic and Creative. It adds broader artifact formats, stronger design-system control, model choice including GLM-5.2, precise AI iteration, asset upload, async operations, and exports. That is why someone should use Modern: not because other tools cannot generate visuals, but because Alai gives developers a way to generate high-quality, editable visual artifacts and keep iterating on them inside an API workflow. ### What can Alai Modern Slides API create? The Modern API supports presentation, infographic, carousel, poster, and social_post artifact formats. It is not limited to traditional slide decks. ### How is Modern Slides API different from Classic and Creative Slides? Modern builds on top of Alai's existing API family. Classic and Creative continue to support their existing workflows, while Modern adds higher-fidelity design-system generation, model choice, natural-language iteration, and broader artifact formats. ### Does Modern Slides API support GLM-5.2? Yes. The public models documentation lists z-ai/glm-5.2 alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Moonshot, and other supported models. Availability can vary by account, so developers should call GET /models at runtime. ### Why use Modern Slides API instead of Claude Design? Use Modern Slides API when you need API access, supported model choice, design-system-driven generation, precise iteration, and exportable artifacts from your own product or workflow. Claude Design is more of an end-user visual workspace. ### Does Alai Modern Slides API have collaboration? Collaboration is not the current differentiator. The Modern API is strongest for high-quality design generation, model choice, precise iteration, and export workflows. ### Does Alai Modern Slides API let developers choose a model? Yes. The API includes GET /models, and generation requests can specify a supported model and fallback policy available to the caller.