There is a Spanish town called Llívia that is completely surrounded by France.

It has been that way since 1659, when a peace treaty handed France all the surrounding villages.

Spain held onto Llívia by arguing it was technically a town, not a village.

France got the whole Pyrenees. Spain got a loophole and absolutely refused to let it go.

What’s in store:

Read Time: 6 minutes

AI USE CASES

How to use AI to find the same product for less

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not you can find something cheaper, the answer is… probably.

There’s a quiet tax most of us pay online.

It’s not shipping.
It’s not inflation.
It’s bad search habits. 

Look, if you really want that one shirt from that one brand, the price is the price. But, if you’re looking for a certain type of item and you don’t really care what brand it is, AI can help you find what you need.

Copy, paste, ask

This is the simplest move and works shockingly well.

What to do

Try this prompt: “This is a branded product. Remove the branding and tell me what the generic version of this product is, including materials, dimensions, and typical price range.”

Then follow with: “What keywords should I search to find the same product without the brand markup?”

You’ll usually discover:

And, the price difference you saw is a bit ridiculous.

Or, Try Amazon’s AI assistant

Amazon’s AI assistant Rufus is basically a trained shopping snitch, built right into the platform that most of us use to do our online shopping.

Rufus is embedded in the main search bar, and you can also click on it if you’re on a specific product page.

Find a product you’re thinking of buying and ask: “What’s a cheaper alternative to this product with the same specs?”

Pro tip: Ask why something costs more. If the answer is branding, you have your cue.

Use your phone as your physical shopping assistant

The above two are for shopping online, but what if you’re at a physical store?

If you have ChatGPT or Gemini on your phone, you can simply:

Try this prompt: “I’m at ____, and I want to find a similar product for cheaper online, but similar quality”.

This works especially well for:

Before you buy, ask AI for a gut-check

This is where AI becomes your anti-impulse-buy assistant.

Even if you do find a cheaper alternative, before buying, ask:“Based on what you know about me, should I buy this product now?”

It may prompt you with some questions to determine if this purchase is a good idea right now. 

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AI AGENTS

The AI Agent Playbook That's Creating 10x Operators in 2026

Evolution didn’t prepare us to compete with robots that never need sleep/caffeine, and read 1,000-plus pages per minute. 

But it did prepare us to commandeer their wayward skills for saving time at work. Read our 2026 AI agent playbook with insights from Futurepedia to use tools like Claude better than 99% of the population.

Meet your personal assistant: 

Link up with tools like Claude to rethink work.

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