What if your AI could help you “cheat on everything” without getting caught—even when someone’s watching?
This is the literal premise behind Cluely, a desktop assistant designed to quietly bypass proctoring software, tools used to monitor and detect cheating during interviews and exams.
“I got kicked out of Columbia for building Interview Coder, AI to cheat on coding interviews. Now I raised $5.3 million to build Cluely, a cheating tool for literally everything,” its CEO, Roy Lee, said on LinkedIn yesterday.
Launched in April, Cluely is an OpenAI-powered overlay that listens, watches, and provides users with real-time responses from ChatGPT during high-stakes video calls.
Available for Mac, the program runs quietly in the background, helping users bypass detection systems that prevent test takers from opening tabs that might help them cheat on tests. A Windows version is in development.
“It blew up after I posted a video of myself using it during an Amazon interview,” Lee told Decrypt. “While using it, I realized the user experience was really interesting—no one had explored this idea of a translucent screen overlay that sees your screen, hears your audio, and acts like a player two for your computer.”
Schools and corporations use proctoring software to preserve academic and employment integrity, particularly in remote settings.
Those tools monitor for signs of cheating through webcam surveillance, browser restrictions, and AI-powered behavior tracking—measures institutions argue are essential to ensure fairness and accountability.
Cluely, however, is designed to circumvent these safeguards quietly.
Originally designed to let people use AI without being detected, the project has since rebranded and grown more ambitious—and more controversial. Marketed with the tagline, “We help people cheat,” Cluely is part viral stunt, part manifesto—but a very real business.
“The world will call it cheating. But so was the calculator. So was spellcheck. So was Google,” Cluely’s website declared. “Every time technology makes us smarter, the world panics. Then it adapts. Then it forgets. And suddenly, it’s normal.”
Lee was apparently expelled from Columbia University late last month for recording and disseminating details from a disciplinary hearing apparently related to his creation of “Interview Coder.”
A clip of Cluely went viral on Sunday after a video showed a man using Cluely on a date to generate responses and pull information from his date’s social media. Lee said that’s not its real purpose, but it got people’s attention.
“It was completely unintentional,” Lee said. “In the video, there’s a glowing border meant to represent a computer screen—we assumed people would recognize it as part of the visual design.”
Lee insists it’s not just about manipulating technical interviews. Cluely’s real goal, he says, is to redefine how we interact with machines, starting at the edge of what feels ethically comfortable.
“We have a few core theses for the company, and the most important is that distribution is the final moat,” he said. “If AI advances as we expect, there won’t be any lasting technological advantage to separate you from competitors. The only thing that matters is who can get the most attention from the most people.”
“For us, that means being as viral as possible—and trying not to go to jail,” he added.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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