> I find it kind of surprising she didn't just spend the $20

If it because the poster's mother dislikes the idea of subscriptions, then I totally get it. (Though I admit I have no idea if this has anything to do with the poster's mother's decision.)

I'll go out of my way as much as I can to avoid signing up for anything that is a subscription because of how horrible the entire corporate world has abused subscription dark patterns over the past couple of decades.

These days just the packaging of anything into a subscription makes me assume there is intent to screw people out of money.

While signing up for LLM usage is fairly low risk as far as subscription lock-in goes, someone non-technical might not be aware of that fact.