Why Cluely’s Roy Lee isn’t sweating cheating detectors

Cluely, an AI startup that uses a hidden in-browser window to analyze online conversations, has shot to fame with the controversial claim that its ‘undetectability’ feature lets users “cheat on everything.”

The company’s co-founder, Roy Lee, was suspended from Columbia University for boasting that he used Cluely, originally called Interview Coder, to “cheat” on a coding test when he was applying for a developer job at Amazon.

On Tuesday, another Columbia University student, Patrick Shen, announced on X that he had built Truely, a product designed to help catch “cheaters” who use Cluely. Marketing itself as an “anti-Cluely,” Truely claims it can detect the use of unauthorized applications by interviewees or others during online meetings.

But Truely’s launch didn’t faze Lee.

“We don’t care if we’re able to be detected or not,” Lee told TechCrunch last week. “The invisibility function is not a core feature of Cluely. It’s a nifty add-on. In fact, most enterprises opt to disable the invisibility altogether because of legal implications.”

Lee responded to Shen on X by praising Truely, but adding that Cluely “will likely start prompting our users to be much more transparent about usage.”

Since securing a $15 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz last month, Cluely has shifted its marketing strategy away from promoting ‘cheating.’  The company’s tagline has recently been changed from “cheat on everything” to “Everything You Need. Before You Ask. … This feels like cheating.”

Cluely’s marketing tactics have been described as rage-bait marketing, and now it seems that the company has baited us into thinking of its technology as a cheating tool.

However, Lee has much bigger ambitions for Cluely: to take the place of ChatGPT.

“Every time you would reach for chatgpt.com, our goal is to create a world where you instead reach for Cluely,” Lee said. “Cluely does functionally the same thing as ChatGPT. The only difference is that it also knows what’s on your screen and hears what’s going on in your audio.”