PowerPoint co-creator Dennis Austin dies at the age of 76

Dennis Austin, one of the creators of Microsoft PowerPoint, died at his home in Los Altos, California, on September 1, The Washington Post reported. He was 76 years old.

Here's What We Know

Before starting his career as a software developer, Austin studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He later joined Forethought, where he and his colleagues developed PowerPoint, which was released in 1987. A few months later, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Forethought. Austin served as the primary developer of PowerPoint from 1985 to 1996, when he retired.

Today, PowerPoint remains a key element of Microsoft's office suite, and the company has recently begun adding AI tools to it with Copilot, a kind of modern AI assistant for Microsoft 365. Copilot can create presentations and edit text in presentations, making the presentation creation process more efficient.

Source: The Verge with reference to The Washington Post