Hi Hanif! AI is becoming a major topic in learning and development. From your perspective, how is AI changing the way organisations develop e-learning content?
The demand for digital learning continues to grow. However, learners now expect online courses to be more visual, engaging, and easy to follow.
For e-learning developers, this creates a familiar challenge. Visual assets are important, but creating them takes time. Teams often search for images, create graphics, adjust branding, export files, and manually insert them into PowerPoint storyboards.
To support this process, Content Tree developed Storyboard AI Assistant. This internal platform improves the e-learning production workflow and includes two key capabilities:
- Narration Agent, which supports content and narration development.
- Illustration Agent, which supports visual content creation.
Can you explain what the Storyboard AI Assistant Illustration Agent does and how it helps your team generate visual assets for e-learning?
The Storyboard AI Assistant Illustration Agent assists our team in generating, retrieving, and inserting visual assets directly into PowerPoint.
What the Illustration Agent Does
With the Storyboard AI Assistant Illustration Agent, our team can create AI-generated images, icons, and graphic elements using the Recraft API.
From a development perspective, the tool connects three parts of the workflow:
- A prompt interface where the user describes the visual asset.
- An API process that sends the request and receives the generated output.
- A PowerPoint integration layer that inserts the selected asset into the active slide.
Therefore, our team no longer needs to generate an image in one platform, download it, locate the file, and manually insert it into PowerPoint. Instead, the process occurs within one working environment.
How do users instruct the Storyboard AI Assistant Illustration Agent to create the desired image?
Generating Visuals from Prompts
The Illustration Agent enables users to describe the image they want to generate using a prompt. This prompt can relate to the slide topic, learning objective, scenario, or visual style.
For example, in a module about online banking, users may generate visuals such as:
- A mobile banking transaction
- A secure digital payment process
- A customer using an e-wallet
- A QR payment illustration
- A banking security concept
Users can also write the prompt in different supported languages. This feature benefits regional e-learning projects where developers work in English, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, or other supported languages.
Once users submit the prompt, the system sends the request through the API and returns the generated visual options for review.
Output Options: PNG and SVG
The Illustration Agent supports two output formats: Raster PNG and Vector SVG.
PNG works well for detailed illustrations, slide visuals, and image-based graphics. Typically, it is used when the asset appears as a standard image in PowerPoint.
SVG is ideal for icons, flat illustrations, and scalable graphic elements. Since SVG is vector-based, it resizes without losing quality. This flexibility allows the development team to generate detailed illustrations as PNG and reusable icons or graphic elements as SVG.
Retrieving Assets from Canva
The Illustration Agent includes a Canva Assets function.
This feature allows the program to connect to the user’s Canva account through a browser login. Once connected, users can retrieve existing assets from Canva, such as icons, illustrations, graphics, or brand design elements.
This capability is beneficial when a project has approved assets stored in Canva. Instead of manually downloading files from Canva and importing them into PowerPoint, users can access them through Storyboard AI Assistant and insert them into the selected slide.
You mentioned that the Storyboard AI Assistant Illustration Agent works directly with PowerPoint. Why was that an important feature to include?
Direct Insertion into PowerPoint
Direct PowerPoint insertion ranks among the most practical features of the Illustration Agent, as many e-learning storyboards are prepared and reviewed in PowerPoint.
The Illustration Agent integrates seamlessly with this existing workflow. When a PowerPoint file is open, the program detects the active presentation and selected slide.
If multiple PowerPoint files are open, users can choose which file to work on. This functionality ensures that the asset inserts into the correct presentation.
In a side-by-side view, the PowerPoint file appears on the left while Storyboard AI Assistant displays on the right. Anything generated through the AI function or retrieved from Canva can insert directly into the active PowerPoint slide.
This integration reduces repetitive manual steps such as downloading, saving, locating, copying, and pasting assets between different applications.
Why This Helps E-Learning Teams
In e-learning production, small manual tasks often consume significant time when repeated across many slides and modules.
The Illustration Agent simplifies the workflow by:
This approach accelerates visual development and enhances consistency. Furthermore, it allows developers and designers to focus more on learning quality rather than repetitive production steps.
AI does not replace human judgment. The team still determines whether the visual supports the learning objective, matches the audience, and aligns with the overall design direction. The Illustration Agent simply enhances the efficiency of the production process.
As we wrap up, what do you think is the biggest value the Illustration Agent brings to e-learning development teams?
As we wrap up, what do you think is the biggest value the Illustration Agent brings to e-learning development teams?
Storyboard AI Assistant represents Content Tree’s ongoing effort to enhance e-learning development workflows.
By combining AI image generation, Recraft API integration, PNG and SVG output, Canva asset retrieval, multilingual prompting, and direct PowerPoint insertion, the Illustration Agent accelerates visual content creation and makes it more practical.
For e-learning teams, the value is clear: they can move from idea to visual asset more quickly and place that asset directly where it is needed — inside the PowerPoint storyboard.