PewDiePie Launches AJAX AI Model After an Alleged Ban by OpenAI
The model is meant to run on users’ own hardware and handle everyday tasks, while OpenAI account suspensions raised questions about its training.
- YouTube creator Felix Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie, unveiled Ajax, a small language model designed to run locally on home hardware based on Alibaba's Qwen3.5-9B model with around 9 billion parameters.
- During Ajax's development, Kjellberg says OpenAI suspended his account twice, with an email citing "distillation" as the reason for one deactivation; he used this machine learning technique to generate training material for the model.
- Kjellberg used the open-source Heretic tool to perform automatic "abliteration," removing some refusal behaviors while retaining safeguards against harmful requests and stating he does not intend Ajax to provide dangerous actionable instructions.
- Ajax remains a work in progress with the website presenting it as "Coming soon" as of October 2, lacking final hardware requirements and independent benchmark results; Kjellberg plans additional reinforcement learning before release.
- The project exemplifies a shift toward local, private AI processing independent of cloud services, highlighting tension between independent developers and restrictions imposed by major AI companies developing large frontier models.
14 Articles
14 Articles
PewDiePie's OpenAI Ban Shows Distillation Rules Can't Tell a YouTuber From an AI Lab
PewDiePie's OpenAI ban came while he was building Ajax, a 9B local model based on Alibaba's Qwen. His attempt to distill OpenAI's reasoning mirrors the pipeline US agencies accused Chinese labs of running, and shows that distillation detection sees behaviour, not who is behind it.
PewDiePie’s OpenAI controversy takes a new turn with his “less restricted” Ajax AI
PewDiePie has unveiled Ajax, a smaller AI model designed to run locally through his self-hosted Odysseus workspace. The project follows his claim that OpenAI suspended his account twice during development, with one displayed email citing “distillation.” Built on Alibaba’s Qwen3.5-9B, Ajax aims to handle everyday tasks while offering a less restrictive experience. However, the model remains unfinished, with benchmarks, hardware requirements and d…
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