Shadow AI
Shadow AI is AI in use that nobody is tracking or paying for centrally. It appears in the spend report on Costs → Analytics.
Shield360 decides it per vendor and per person. Use is sanctioned when the person holds a seat on a subscription from the same vendor. Anything else is shadow.
Evidence
Section titled “Evidence”Each source catches what the others miss:
| Kind | Evidence | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Plan with no subscription on record | A coding tool reported a paid plan that no tracked seat covers. Usually a personal subscription. | Collector |
| API key, billed per token | Real per-token spend on a key that may or may not be the company’s. Marked Review, not Shadow. | Collector |
| Website | Time on an AI website. | Browsing domains or full |
| Desktop app | Time in an AI desktop application. | Collector |
| Direct API traffic | A non-browser process (a script, an app or an agent) talking to an AI provider directly, with a fingerprint of the key it used if one was seen. | Network observation (+ key fingerprints) |
Browser traffic to a provider isn’t counted as direct API traffic. The same visit is already listed as a website, and counting it twice would inflate it.
Website time is measured from the addresses the focused browser is connected to, not from tabs or URLs, which the collector never reads. An address that ordinary pages also use is never counted:
- GitHub Copilot in the browser isn’t measured this way. Its chat lives at a path on github.com, and its own hosts share addresses with github.com, so every visit to GitHub would count. The browser extension sees the site and measures it.
- Gemini and Google AI Studio share Google’s front ends with Gmail, Drive, the Google apps bar and the browser’s own Google services. Addresses those also use aren’t counted, so Gemini time can be undercounted, never inflated by other Google use.
- The same rule applies to direct provider traffic from other applications: an updater or Drive talking to Google’s shared API front ends isn’t counted as Gemini API use.
Status
Section titled “Status”| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Shadow | No one using it holds a seat from this vendor. |
| Review | Per-token spend. It may be a sanctioned company key, so it needs a human to confirm. |
| Sanctioned | Everyone using it holds a seat. Hidden by default; use Show sanctioned to include it. |
Each item lists who is using it (people with a seat are marked “has a seat”), on which machines, usage and value at list API rates, key fingerprints ([key_hint:fp_…], never characters of a key), and first and last seen. Web and app use have no token count, so they carry no value.
Bringing it under management
Section titled “Bringing it under management”Use Add subscription on a shadow item to record the subscription and give those people seats. From then on, their use counts as covered and moves out of Shadow AI.