Cheat on meetings. Cheat on exams. Cheat on sales calls. Cheat on dates. Cheat on Everything.
A controversial AI startup promotes their app as the best way to do all of those things, and they have just secured millions in venture funding.
Cluely, founded by 21-year-old Columbia University dropouts Chungin “Roy” Lee and Neel Shanmugam, offers an “undetectable” AI assistant that operates through a hidden browser window during exams, job interviews, and sales calls, and is already generating a reported $3 million in annual recurring revenue just weeks after launch.
From Suspension For Cheating To Silicon Valley
Cluely emerged from a student project called “Interview Coder” by Lee and Shanmugam while they were students at Columbia University last year. They created the software to help users cheat on technical coding interviews.
Lee used the AI himself to help secure internships from major companies including Amazon. According to Tech Crunch, when Lee posted a video showcasing how he used the tool during an Amazon interview, an executive there reportedly complained to Columbia University.
After investigating, Columbia put Lee on academic probation for “facilitation of academic dishonesty”. Lee than posted some confidential documents from his disciplinary record and Columbia then suspended him for a year.
Rather than give up, both Lee and Shanmugam, dropped out of Columbia, moved to San Francisco and rebranded their software Interview Coder as “Cluely”, and expanded its purpose to help people cheat on everything.
“We Want You To Cheat On Everything”
Cluely wants to usher in a world of cheating, and they are not afraid to tout it on all their marketing materials.
“We want you to cheat on everything. Yep, you heard that right. Interviews. Exams. Sales calls. Meetings. If there’s a faster way to win — we’ll take it”, they post on their inaugaral Youtube video.
In a way, Cluely is taken a page out of the “Ashley Madison” playbook – promoting that everyone cheats and its ok.
In fact, their tongue and cheek demo video commercial shows how the AI can be used to fool a girl on a first date.
While the advertisement might be funny, the use cases they are promoting cross ethical lines and in some cases into outright fraud.
An example of that? Cheating on exams. Their website promotes “Invisible AI To Cheat On Exams”.
In California, cheating on an exam, particularly a government or standardized test, can have legal consequences and can either be a misdemeanor or a felony depending on the extent.
Another example? Cheating at interviews. Their website promotes using the AI to cheat during interviews.
While legal, this crosses ethical lines not to mention hurts companies and other candidates that actually have experience and technical skills.
How The AI Works – An Invisible Hidden Browser
Cluely’s core technology centers on a hidden browser window that remains invisible during screen sharing.
The application employs transparent window properties, “always on top” flags, frame removal, and taskbar hiding to create an overlay that’s visible only to the user.
While running, Cluely can monitor the screen as well as the audio to generate the best responses for the user. Users can also upload documents like sales briefs or technical specifications, which Cluely automatically references during calls, creating the perception that the user has knowledge and experience they really don’t.
$5.3 Million To Promote Dishonesty
On April 21st, Lee announced that Cluely had raised $5.3 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures. The founders who had just moved to San Francisco and established the company had raised millions in just weeks.
Just two weeks later, Lee claimed that the company had already surpased $3 million in ARR and had amassed over 70,000 users paying up to $20 a month for the subscription service.
Their AI works on Zoom, Google, Meet and Microsoft Teams making it useable in just about every business setting.
Despite ethical concerns their rapid ascent proves that there is significant market demand for AI that enables deception. And that certainly doesn’t bode well for the future.
Hiring 50 Interns In The Most Expensive Building In San Francisco
A newly released video by the co-founders sheds light on the culture of the company they are creating.
And honestly it looks like its going to be an absolute disaster.
The video titled “I’m Spending $2 Million To Hire The Best Engineers In The World”, starts by saying “I just spent half a million dollars on the biggest office we could find in the heart of downtown San Franscisco.
The founders go on to say that they are trying to hire 50 interns for $50 and hour to fill up the office. They also tout that they are going to offer “insane bonuses”
Something about this video screams that this company is going to implode spectactularly at some point.
After all its a company built on cheating, and that just never works out in the long run.
