# AutoPresent: Designing Structured Visuals from Scratch

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.00912 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00912/

## Key facts

- Cited by 68 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12950/) (2023)
- [WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13854/) (2023)
- [WebGPT: Browser-assisted question-answering with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09332/) (2021)
- [SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15793/) (2024)
- [WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01206/) (2022)
- [DeepSeek-Coder: When the Large Language Model Meets Programming -- The Rise of Code Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14196/) (2024)
- [ViperGPT: Visual Inference via Python Execution for Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08128/) (2023)
- [Visual Programming: Compositional visual reasoning without training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11559/) (2022)
- [Agent Workflow Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07429/) (2024)
- [StyleGAN-T: Unlocking the Power of GANs for Fast Large-Scale Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09515/) (2023)
- [SWE-bench Multimodal: Do AI Systems Generalize to Visual Software Domains?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03859/) (2024)
- [StarVector: Generating Scalable Vector Graphics Code from Images and Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11556/) (2023)
- [AutomaTikZ: Text-Guided Synthesis of Scientific Vector Graphics with TikZ](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00367/) (2023)
- [SVGDreamer: Text Guided SVG Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16476/) (2023)
- [TroVE: Inducing Verifiable and Efficient Toolboxes for Solving Programmatic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12869/) (2024)
- [DOC2PPT: Automatic Presentation Slides Generation from Scientific Documents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11796/) (2021)
- [D2S: Document-to-Slide Generation Via Query-Based Text Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03664/) (2021)
- [Modular Visual Question Answering via Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05392/) (2023)
- [PosterLLaVa: Constructing a Unified Multi-modal Layout Generator with LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02884/) (2024)
- [A Vision Check-up for Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01862/) (2024)
- [PPTC Benchmark: Evaluating Large Language Models for PowerPoint Task Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01767/) (2023)
- [Automatically Generating Engaging Presentation Slide Decks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.09308/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 68)

- [PPTAgent: Generating and Evaluating Presentations Beyond Text-to-Slides](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03936/) (2025)
- [Paper2Poster: Towards Multimodal Poster Automation from Scientific Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21497/) (2025)
- [Transforming Science with Large Language Models: A Survey on AI-assisted Scientific Discovery, Experimentation, Content Generation, and Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05151/) (2025)
- [SlideCoder: Layout-aware RAG-enhanced Hierarchical Slide Generation from Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07964/) (2025)
- [Learning to See Before Seeing: Demystifying LLM Visual Priors from Language Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26625/) (2025)
- [AutoFigure: Generating and Refining Publication-Ready Scientific Illustrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03828/) (2026)
- [PresentAgent: Multimodal Agent for Presentation Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04036/) (2025)
- [Morae: Proactively Pausing UI Agents for User Choices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21456/) (2025)
- [How Do AI Agents Do Human Work? Comparing AI and Human Workflows Across Diverse Occupations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22780/) (2025)
- [DeepPresenter: Environment-Grounded Reflection for Agentic Presentation Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.22839/) (2026)
- [PreGenie: An Agentic Framework for High-quality Visual Presentation Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21660/) (2025)
- [PPTBench: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Large Language Models for PowerPoint Layout and Design Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02624/) (2025)
- [PresentBench: A Fine-Grained Rubric-Based Benchmark for Slide Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07244/) (2026)
- [Presenting a Paper is an Art: Self-Improvement Aesthetic Agents for Academic Presentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05571/) (2025)
- [SlideTailor: Personalized Presentation Slide Generation for Scientific Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20292/) (2025)
- [BannerAgency: Advertising Banner Design with Multimodal LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11060/) (2025)
- [Talk to Your Slides: High-Efficiency Slide Editing via Language-Driven Structured Data Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11604/) (2025)
- [PPTArena: A Benchmark for PowerPoint Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03042/) (2025)
- [DECKBench: Benchmarking Multi-Agent Frameworks for Academic Slide Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13318/) (2026)
- [AeSlides: Incentivizing Aesthetic Layout in LLM-Based Slide Generation via Verifiable Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22840/) (2026)
- [AI for Auto-Research: Roadmap & User Guide](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18661/) (2026)
- [SlidesGen-Bench: Evaluating Slides Generation via Computational and Quantitative Metrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09487/) (2026)
- [AutoDesign: Meta-Harness Optimization for Long-Horizon Agentic Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.13560/) (2026)
- [SciFig: Towards Automating Editable Figure Generation for Scientific Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04390/) (2026)
- [Human-Agent Collaborative Paper-to-Page Crafting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19600/) (2025)
- [DesignPref: Capturing Personal Preferences in Visual Design Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20513/) (2025)
- [PPT-Eval: A Benchmark for Computer-Use Agents on PowerPoint Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31154/) (2026)
- [DesignAsCode: Bridging Structural Editability and Visual Fidelity in Graphic Design Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17690/) (2026)
- [LottieGPT: Tokenizing Vector Animation for Autoregressive Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11792/) (2026)
- [SciPostGen: Bridging the Gap between Scientific Papers and Poster Layouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22490/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Designing structured visuals such as presentation slides is essential for communicative needs, necessitating both content creation and visual planning skills. In this work, we tackle the challenge of automated slide generation, where models produce slide presentations from natural language (NL) instructions. We first introduce the SlidesBench benchmark, the first benchmark for slide generation with 7k training and 585 testing examples derived from 310 slide decks across 10 domains. SlidesBench supports evaluations that are (i)reference-based to measure similarity to a target slide, and (ii)reference-free to measure the design quality of generated slides alone. We benchmark end-to-end image generation and program generation methods with a variety of models, and find that programmatic methods produce higher-quality slides in user-interactable formats. Built on the success of program generation, we create AutoPresent, an 8B Llama-based model trained on 7k pairs of instructions paired with code for slide generation, and achieve results comparable to the closed-source model GPT-4o. We further explore iterative design refinement where the model is tasked to self-refine its own output, and we found that this process improves the slide's quality. We hope that our work will provide a basis for future work on generating structured visuals.