- Cluely’s Roy Lee says undetectability is not core to the product, as most clients disable it for legal reasons.
- The company is shifting away from “cheating” marketing and focusing on broader AI assistant ambitions.
- Lee sees Cluely as a future ChatGPT rival, leveraging its ability to access on-screen and audio context.
Cluely, the AI startup known for its “cheat on everything” tagline and hidden in-browser window, is again in the spotlight after a rival product, Truely, launched to detect users “cheating” with Cluely during online assessments.
But co-founder Roy Lee remains unfazed by the new wave of anti-cheating tech.
“We don’t care if we’re able to be detected or not,” Lee told TechCrunch, downplaying the importance of Cluely’s invisibility function.
He explained that most enterprise customers disable the feature due to legal risks, calling it a “nifty add-on” rather than the core of Cluely’s value proposition.
Lee even praised Truely’s efforts publicly, adding that Cluely may soon prompt users to be more transparent about their use of the tool.
This marks a shift from Cluely’s earlier, provocative marketing tactics, which leaned into the controversy and rage-baited the public by promoting undetectable “cheating.”
Following a $15 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz, Cluely has rebranded with a new tagline: “Everything You Need. Before You Ask. … This feels like cheating.”
Despite the headlines, Lee’s ambitions for Cluely are much broader. He aims to position the platform as a direct competitor to ChatGPT, but with the added advantage of context awareness—Cluely can “see” the user’s screen and “hear” audio, offering more relevant assistance.
Edited by Annette George
