A USE AI charge on your bank statement is almost always a recurring subscription fee from an artificial intelligence service billing your card, most often a company called Use.AI whose billing descriptor appears exactly that way. If you or anyone with access to your card signed up for an AI tool recently, even for a free trial, that is the likely source. The charge is not a fee imposed by your bank, and it is not a legal penalty.
What the Descriptor Actually Identifies
Use.AI operates a subscription service, and its transactions post to card statements under the “USE AI” descriptor. Other AI platforms use different labels. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, typically appears as “OPENAI” followed by a transaction code. Midjourney bills under its own name. Anthropic’s Claude posts under its own name too.
The most common reason people don’t recognize the charge is a free trial that converted automatically to a paid plan. Search your email for signup confirmations or receipts around the date the trial would have started. That is usually the fastest way to match a mystery line item to the account it belongs to.
One thing to check before assuming fraud: if you subscribed through the Apple App Store or Google Play, the descriptor on your statement will read Apple or Google, not “USE AI.” A “USE AI” descriptor points to a direct signup on a provider’s website rather than an in-app purchase.
How Much AI Subscriptions Typically Cost
Comparing the dollar amount on your statement to standard subscription pricing is a quick sanity check.
- Midjourney: $10 per month for Basic, $30 for Standard, $60 for Pro, and $120 for Mega.1Midjourney. Comparing Midjourney Plans
- ChatGPT Plus from OpenAI: $20 per month, with a higher-tier Pro plan available.
- Anthropic’s Claude Pro: $20 per month.
If your charge falls in the $10 to $30 range and you have used any generative AI tool recently, the charge is almost certainly a legitimate subscription. A much larger amount, or a charge in a currency you don’t recognize, deserves a closer look.
Canceling a Subscription You No Longer Want
If the charge is real but you want it to stop, where you cancel depends on how you originally signed up. For subscriptions billed directly through the provider’s website, log into your account, open your plan or billing settings, and choose the cancellation option. Most providers process cancellations right away but keep your access alive through the end of the current billing period.
App Store subscriptions have to be canceled through Apple, not through the AI company. Open your device settings, tap your name, select “Subscriptions,” find the service, and cancel it there. Google Play works the same way from the Play Store’s payment settings. If you cancel less than 24 hours before the next billing date, you may still be charged for one more cycle.
Disputing a Charge You Never Authorized
If you didn’t sign up for anything and can’t tie the charge to anyone with legitimate access to your card, treat it as a possible unauthorized transaction. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, you have 60 days from the date the statement was sent to dispute the charge in writing with your card issuer.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666 – Correction of Billing Errors The written notice should include your name, account number, the date and amount of the transaction, and an explanation of why you believe it is an error.
Once the issuer receives the dispute, it has 30 days to acknowledge it and must resolve the matter within two billing cycles, up to a 90-day outer limit.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666 – Correction of Billing Errors While the investigation is open, the issuer cannot try to collect the disputed amount from you or report it as delinquent. Most banks also allow you to open a dispute inside their app or website. That is faster, but the statutory protections specifically reference written notice, so a follow-up letter is worth keeping in your records.
A few practical steps go along with the dispute. Ask your issuer to block or replace the card if you suspect the number was compromised. Review the last several statements for other charges you don’t recognize; card testing often produces small amounts before larger ones. If a pattern emerges, report it to the Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. The FTC doesn’t resolve individual complaints, but reports feed a database law enforcement agencies use to identify fraud rings.3Federal Trade Commission. Report Fraud For cyber-enabled fraud specifically, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center accepts reports at ic3.gov, and the agency encourages filing even when you aren’t sure the incident qualifies.4Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Welcome to the Internet Crime Complaint Center
When Someone Else Used Your Card
A charge you don’t recognize isn’t always a stranger’s work. Household members, including children with access to a shared device, sometimes sign up for AI tools using a saved card. Before filing a fraud dispute, it is worth asking. A dispute filed as unauthorized fraud when the transaction was actually a family member’s signup can complicate the bank’s investigation and, in some cases, close your account.
If it was a family member, cancel the subscription through whichever channel it was created in and ask the provider for a refund of the most recent charge. Many AI services will refund a single billing cycle for a customer who canceled promptly and didn’t use the paid features, though refund policies vary and none of it is guaranteed.
A Note on the Other Meaning
If you searched for a “use of AI charge” in the criminal sense, meaning charges brought against someone for using artificial intelligence to commit a crime, that is a separate topic from a billing descriptor and calls for a different resource. Federal prosecutors bring those cases primarily under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act at 18 U.S.C. ยง 1030,5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1030 – Fraud and Related Activity in Connection With Computers and, for non-consensual AI-generated intimate images, under the TAKE IT DOWN Act enacted in 2025.6Congress.gov. S.146 – TAKE IT DOWN Act, 119th Congress (2025-2026) Anyone facing that kind of charge should speak with a criminal defense attorney rather than rely on a general explainer.