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AI extensions built specifically for Canvas quizzes are making it easier than ever for students to cheat. The extensions install from the Chrome Web Store, read the question from the page the student is looking at, and answer the quiz questions in no time.
If you currently allow Canvas quizzes to be taken in the private browser of the student, the immediate solution is straightforward: you need a security layer outside of Canvas to avoid these extensions from working. If you already use a device lockdown solution, but still suspect that students are using AI, your students may be using a bypass. In this article, we’ll help you with a solution for both instances.
Here is what this article covers:
- How AI tools now operate inside Canvas quizzes
- Why Canvas cannot block AI extensions itself
- How Schoolyear blocks AI extensions in Canvas quizzes
- How students still use AI with a lockdown browser
- How Schoolyear blocks AI overlays and bypass tools
How AI tools now operate inside Canvas quizzes
Canvas does not prevent AI tools from being used. An extension or assistant runs in the browser or on the device and reads the content Canvas has already rendered for the student. There are four routes worth knowing about.
- Purpose-built Canvas extensions. Canvas Quiz Solver and Wizard exist for one job: answering Canvas quiz questions. Installing is free and answering questions runs on a paid monthly subscription, which is worth noting because it tells you these are businesses rather than a hobby project.
- AI built into the browser itself. Browsers such as Chrome and Edge now ship with AI chat tools that can use the current tab as context and answer in a side panel. The student doesn’t have to click away from the quiz. Removing one product from the Chrome Web Store does nothing about AI that arrives with the browser.
- Agentic browsers. These browsers do not just supply the answer in a sidebar, they operate the page. Dr Joseph Brown, Director of the Academic Integrity Program at Colorado State University, tested this and reported that widely available agentic browsers can complete Canvas quizzes and exams from a single text prompt.
- AI overlays. Tools such as Cluely run as a separate desktop application and place an AI assistant over whatever is already on the student’s screen. They can use the visible screen as context and return answers without the student leaving Canvas or opening another browser tab.
What all these methods share is that they read the same visible page content the student is looking at. When Instructure investigated Canvas Quiz Solver, their engineers confirmed that the extension had no access to Canvas quiz data. It pulled visible content from the page and searched externally for an answer.
An example of AI completing a Canvas quiz
Why Canvas cannot block AI extensions itself
Question banks, shuffled answers, time limits and one question per page are all useful tools against cheating, but none of them defend against AI tools. An extension that reads the rendered page reads whatever is on that page, in whatever order it appears.
Canvas is a website, and a website cannot reliably disable software running in the student's browser or on their operating system.
When Instructure looked into Canvas Quiz Solver in June 2025, they reported that switching to New Quizzes could stop that version of the extension from working, while noting that new tools may emerge. By August 2026, the cheat vendor was advertising support for both Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes on its own website.
Extension-specific fixes by Canvas have a shelf life. The AI tools update, and you find out when you notice that students are getting suspiciously high test scores again. Whatever exam security you put in place has to work against the entire category of AI extensions for Canvas quizzes, not against one extension by name.
This means the control has to sit where the tools run: on the device, not in the LMS. You need a secure environment that determines what can run on the student's machine while the quiz is open.
How Schoolyear blocks AI usage in Canvas quizzes
Schoolyear's Safe Exam Workspace is device lockdown software for in-person digital exams. The Canvas quiz opens inside of the workspace, not inside of the student's own browser. This means there is no browser for an AI extension to attach to, no browser assistant sitting in the side panel, and no ability for an AI overlay like Cluely to run in the background. This applies the same way on a laptop your institution manages and on a laptop the student owns.
Setting up the Safe Exam Workspace is straightforward. Your Canvas administrator connects it to your Canvas instance once. After that, instructors enable it themselves, from inside their own Canvas course. You open the quiz you have already built and simply switch on the Safe Exam Workspace.
The exam flow looks like this:
- Educators enable Schoolyear on the quiz in Canvas and set which resources (web pages, files, or desktop applications) students are allowed to reach during the exam.
- Students install Schoolyear once, ahead of the exam, on the laptop they will use.
- On exam day they open the quiz in Canvas and launch the workspace. Automated checks run on the device, and once they pass, the student lands in the quiz inside the secure environment.
- When the student submits their quiz, they exit the workspace and the device returns to normal.
How some students still manage to use AI within well-known lockdown browsers
Plenty of institutions already have a lockdown layer and still see quiz results they cannot explain. In this case, it’s possible that students are using a lockdown bypass.
There is a commercial market that builds lockdown bypasses and sells them to students. They use different methods, such as running the exam inside a virtual machine while AI runs on the host outside it or enabling an AI overlay that reads the exam screen and returns an answer in no time. We documented how that market operates in our report on the industry behind lockdown tool bypasses.
If you notice that your students are still using AI, it means that the device lockdown software you are using may have been compromised by one of these bypasses.
How Schoolyear blocks AI overlays and other bypass tools
Bypasses succeed because of three specific weaknesses.
- Traditional lockdown tools look for one trick instead of blocking in layers, so a hardened virtual machine walks past their single check.
- Traditional lockdown tools lock the device at the start and never verify again, so an attempt during the exam raises no alert.
- And they often patch bypasses slowly, which means that students get to keep cheating during exams, even if the bypass has been reported by institutions.
Schoolyear is built on five principles to defend against bypasses:
- Prevent. Restrictions are enforced at system level while the exam runs, at the lowest level and in more than one layer. Overlays, virtual machines, remote access tools and screenshot utilities are blocked.
- Separate. The quiz runs in the workspace, not in the environment the student controls. There is nothing to customize, extend or exploit with the browser tricks the tools rely on.
- Isolate. Where an exam needs applications, they do not run locally. Tools such as Excel, SPSS or MATLAB run isolated from personal storage, cloud drives and local AI features, which also keeps exam content from leaking out.
- Verify. The lockdown is checked continuously, not once at launch. If a restriction is triggered or a bypass is attempted, it is logged and flagged in real time on the exam dashboard, down to the specific event: a blocked navigation to an AI site or a virtual machine detected.
- Respond. New bypass techniques appear constantly, so the security is updated as they emerge and the updates reach students automatically. Neither your students nor your instructors have to do anything for an exam to be protected against last month's technique.
→ Want to see how this works with your own Canvas quizzes? Book a demo.
