# The AI Cheating Arms Race: Startups Battle Cluely with Detection Tech, While Cluely Eyes Hardware

## The AI Cheating Arms Race: Startups Battle Cluely with Detection Tech, While Cluely Eyes Hardware

The emergence of Cluely, an AI-powered cheating app, has sparked a counter-offensive in the tech world. Cluely, which went viral after boasting about its “undetectable” in-browser window capable of “cheating on everything” from job interviews to exams, is now facing challenges from startups developing tools to expose its users.

San Francisco-based Validia recently launched “Truely,” a free product designed to trigger an alarm when it detects Cluely in use. Meanwhile, Proctaroo, based in Rhode Island, is also claiming its platform can identify Cluely users. “When a Proctaroo session is active, we can see running applications and ‘hidden’ background processes — Cluely is no different,” Proctaroo CEO Adrian Aamodt told TechCrunch, criticizing Cluely’s business model as “unethical.”

However, Cluely isn’t backing down. Co-founder and CEO Chungin “Roy” Lee dismisses the anti-cheating tools as ineffective, drawing parallels to the ongoing, and often failed, efforts to combat cheating in the video game industry.

Lee is even hinting at a hardware-based future for Cluely, a move that could render anti-cheating software completely obsolete. “Whether it’s smart glasses, a transparent glass screen overlay, a recording necklace, or even a brain chip, we’re not sure,” Lee stated. He claims that expanding into hardware is “quite trivial technologically,” despite recent high-profile AI hardware failures like Humane’s AI Pin.

The backlash against Cluely appears to be having some effect. The company has quietly removed references to cheating on exams and job interviews from its website and manifesto, a key selling point initially. Now, Cluely is focusing on “cheating” in areas like sales calls and meetings.

Lee told TechCrunch that Cluely is “redefining” its messaging to target the “largest and most impactful markets.” He added, “Ultimately, we see a future where everyone uses AI to its utmost potential, and that means planting in large, specific markets, and expanding out from there.”

The battle lines are drawn. As Cluely attempts to carve out a niche in the AI-assisted productivity (or, as some see it, deception) market, other startups are stepping up to enforce integrity. Whether this evolves into a cat-and-mouse game, or a full-blown tech arms race, remains to be seen.