What I can do in my day-to-day life with AI: prompting tips
Fecha de la noticia: 23-06-2025

Artificial intelligence is no longer a thing of the future: it is here and can become an ally in our daily lives. From making tasks easier for us at work, such as writing emails or summarizing documents, to helping us organize a trip, learn a new language, or plan our weekly menus, AI adapts to our routines to make our lives easier. You don't have to be tech-savvy to take advantage of it; while today's tools are very accessible, understanding their capabilities and knowing how to ask the right questions will maximize their usefulness.
AI Passive and Active Subjects
The applications of artificial intelligence in everyday life are transforming our daily lives. AI already covers multiple fields of our routines. Virtual assistants, such as Siri or Alexa, are among the most well-known tools that incorporate artificial intelligence, and are used to answer questions, schedule appointments, or control devices.
Many people use tools or applications with artificial intelligence on a daily basis, even if it operates imperceptibly to the user and does not require their intervention. Google Maps, for example, uses AI to optimize routes in real time, predict traffic conditions, suggest alternative routes or estimate the time of arrival. Spotify applies it to personalize playlists or suggest songs, and Netflix to make recommendations and tailor the content shown to each user.
But it is also possible to be an active user of artificial intelligence using tools that interact directly with the models. Thus, we can ask questions, generate texts, summarize documents or plan tasks. AI is no longer a hidden mechanism but a kind of digital co-pilot that assists us in our day-to-day lives. ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini are tools that allow us to use AI without having to be experts. This makes it easier for us to automate daily tasks, freeing up time to spend on other activities.
AI in Home and Personal Life
Virtual assistants respond to voice commands and inform us what time it is, the weather or play the music we want to listen to. But their possibilities go much further, as they are able to learn from our habits to anticipate our needs. They can control different devices that we have in the home in a centralized way, such as heating, air conditioning, lights or security devices. It is also possible to configure custom actions that are triggered via a voice command. For example, a "good morning" routine that turns on the lights, informs us of the weather forecast and the traffic conditions.
When we have lost the manual of one of the appliances or electronic devices we have at home, artificial intelligence is a good ally. By sending a photo of the device, you will help us interpret the instructions, set it up, or troubleshoot basic issues.
If you want to go further, AI can do some everyday tasks for you. Through these tools we can plan our weekly menus, indicating needs or preferences, such as dishes suitable for celiacs or vegetarians, prepare the shopping list and obtain the recipes. It can also help us choose between the dishes on a restaurant's menu taking into account our preferences and dietary restrictions, such as allergies or intolerances. Through a simple photo of the menu, the AI will offer us personalized suggestions.
Physical exercise is another area of our personal lives in which these digital co-pilots are very valuable. We may ask you, for example, to create exercise routines adapted to different physical conditions, goals and available equipment.
Planning a vacation is another of the most interesting features of these digital assistants. If we provide them with a destination, a number of days, interests, and even a budget, we will have a complete plan for our next trip.
Applications of AI in studies
AI is profoundly transforming the way we study, offering tools that personalize learning. Helping the little ones in the house with their schoolwork, learning a language or acquiring new skills for our professional development are just some of the possibilities.
There are platforms that generate personalized content in just a few minutes and didactic material made from open data that can be used both in the classroom and at home to review. Among university students or high school students, some of the most popular options are applications that summarize or make outlines from longer texts. It is even possible to generate a podcast from a file, which can help us understand and become familiar with a topic while playing sports or cooking.
But we can also create our applications to study or even simulate exams. Without having programming knowledge, it is possible to generate an application to learn multiplication tables, irregular verbs in English or whatever we can think of.
How to Use AI in Work and Personal Finance
In the professional field, artificial intelligence offers tools that increase productivity. In fact, it is estimated that in Spain 78% of workers already use AI tools in the workplace. By automating processes, we save time to focus on higher-value tasks. These digital assistants summarize long documents, generate specialized reports in a field, compose emails, or take notes in meetings.
Some platforms already incorporate the transcription of meetings in real time, something that can be very useful if we do not master the language. Microsoft Teams, for example, offers useful options through Copilot from the "Summary" tab of the meeting itself, such as transcription, a summary or the possibility of adding notes.
The management of personal finances has also evolved thanks to applications that use AI, allowing you to control expenses and manage a budget. But we can also create our own personal financial advisor using an AI tool, such as ChatGPT. By providing you with insights into income, fixed expenses, variables, and savings goals, it analyzes the data and creates personalized financial plans.
Prompts and creation of useful applications for everyday life
We have seen the great possibilities that artificial intelligence offers us as a co-pilot in our day-to-day lives. But to make it a good digital assistant, we must know how to ask it and give it precise instructions.
A prompt is a basic instruction or request that is made to an AI model to guide it, with the aim of providing us with a coherent and quality response. Good prompting is the key to getting the most out of AI. It is essential to ask well and provide the necessary information.
To write effective prompts we have to be clear, specific, and avoid ambiguities. We must indicate what the objective is, that is, what we want the AI to do: summarize, translate, generate an image, etc. It is also key to provide it with context, explaining who it is aimed at or why we need it, as well as how we expect the response to be. This can include the tone of the message, the formatting, the fonts used to generate it, etc.
Here are some tips for creating effective prompts:
- Use short, direct and concrete sentences. The clearer the request, the more accurate the answer. Avoid expressions such as "please" or "thank you", as they only add unnecessary noise and consume more resources. Instead, use words like "must," "do," "include," or "list." To reinforce the request, you can capitalize those words. These expressions are especially useful for fine-tuning a first response from the model that doesn't meet your expectations.
- It indicates the audience to which it is addressed. Specify whether the answer is aimed at an expert audience, inexperienced audience, children, adolescents, adults, etc. When we want a simple answer, we can, for example, ask the AI to explain it to us as if we were ten years old.
- Use delimiters. Separate the instructions using a symbol, such as slashes (//) or quotation marks to help the model understand the instruction better. For example, if you want it to do a translation, it uses delimiters to separate the command ("Translate into English") from the phrase it is supposed to translate.
- Indicates the function that the model should adopt. Specifies the role that the model should assume to generate the response. Telling them whether they should act like an expert in finance or nutrition, for example, will help generate more specialized answers as they will adapt both the content and the tone.
- Break down entire requests into simple requests. If you're going to make a complex request that requires an excessively long prompt, it's a good idea to break it down into simpler steps. If you need detailed explanations, use expressions like "Think by step" to give you a more structured answer.
- Use examples. Include examples of what you're looking for in the prompt to guide the model to the answer.
- Provide positive instructions. Instead of asking them not to do or include something, state the request in the affirmative. For example, instead of "Don't use long sentences," say, "Use short, concise sentences." Positive instructions avoid ambiguities and make it easier for the AI to understand what it needs to do. This happens because negative prompts put extra effort on the model, as it has to deduce what the opposite action is.
- Offer tips or penalties. This serves to reinforce desired behaviors and restrict inappropriate responses. For example, "If you use vague or ambiguous phrases, you will lose 100 euros."
- Ask them to ask you what they need. If we instruct you to ask us for additional information we reduce the possibility of hallucinations, as we are improving the context of our request.
- Request that they respond like a human. If the texts seem too artificial or mechanical, specify in the prompt that the response is more natural or that it seems to be crafted by a human.
- Provides the start of the answer. This simple trick is very useful in guiding the model towards the response we expect.
- Define the fonts to use. If we narrow down the type of information you should use to generate the answer, we will get more refined answers. It asks, for example, that it only use data after a specific year.
- Request that it mimic a style. We can provide you with an example to make your response consistent with the style of the reference or ask you to follow the style of a famous author.
While it is possible to generate functional code for simple tasks and applications without programming knowledge, it is important to note that developing more complex or robust solutions at a professional level still requires programming and software development expertise. To create, for example, an application that helps us manage our pending tasks, we ask AI tools to generate the code, explaining in detail what we want it to do, how we expect it to behave, and what it should look like. From these instructions, the tool will generate the code and guide us to test, modify and implement it. We can ask you how and where to run it for free and ask for help making improvements.
As we've seen, the potential of these digital assistants is enormous, but their true power lies in large part in how we communicate with them. Clear and well-structured prompts are the key to getting accurate answers without needing to be tech-savvy. AI not only helps us automate routine tasks, but it expands our capabilities, allowing us to do more in less time. These tools are redefining our day-to-day lives, making it more efficient and leaving us time for other things. And best of all: it is now within our reach.