"Even My Card Was Blocked": Student Billed 25.1 Billion Won by AI, Only for It to Suddenly Vanish After Three Days

[Anchor]

A user in Korea who utilized Claude, an AI service from the U.S.-based company Anthropic, received a bill for over 25 billion won. With repeated attempts to charge this astronomical amount to his account, the user was forced to block his credit card. Park Jaehyeon reports on what happened.

[Reporter]

Yang Seung-min, a university student who uses Claude Fable 5, the latest agent AI from Anthropic, received an email regarding his usage fees on July 8.

The email stated that he needed to pay 1.669 million dollars, which is over 2.5 billion won.

While there were more than 10 attempts to charge the amount to Yang's card, the transactions were declined due to the excessively high amount.

The billed amount continued to rise afterward, eventually reaching a total of over 25.1 billion won.

Yang urgently blocked his card.

[Yang Seung-min / Claude Fable 5 User: It started at 2.46 billion won, and then it hit 25.16 billion won. I was terrified. I thought if it was actually charged, my life would be over.]

Yang, who had not used any services beyond his subscription plan, sent 18 emails to Anthropic. It was only after three days that he received a response—presumably from an AI—stating that the issue was due to an "automatic top-up setting error."

However, Yang had never used the automatic top-up feature.

[Yang Seung-min / Claude Fable 5 User: There was nothing in my system that would have caused an erroneous charge. I received the bill, but I am in a situation where I don't know the reason why.]

In response, Anthropic stated, "We are in communication with the user and have resolved the issue."

On U.S. online communities such as Reddit, there are also posts from users claiming they have suffered from billing errors with Anthropic's AI and are facing difficulties in obtaining refunds.

Experts point out that the unilateral billing of usage fees, combined with the lack of transparency regarding how these charges are calculated, is a significant problem.

[Kim Tae-hoon / Professor at Sogang University Graduate School of Metaverse: They must clearly disclose how the usage led to these costs. Charging fees without providing such transparency is a matter of controversy.]

In the United States, users of Anthropic's premium subscription plan have filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming that the actual usage provided falls significantly short of what was advertised.

Reported by Lee Mu-jin and Kim Nam-seong | Video by Kim Jin-won | Graphics by Kang Yun-jeong
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.