PewDiePie Banned Twice by OpenAI for Distilling Chain-of-Thought to Train Open Model

PewDiePie, the most-subscribed individual YouTuber worldwide, released an uncensored open-source model called Ajax, built on Qwen 3.5 9B and running on his home PC. He also said publicly that during development OpenAI banned his account twice over 'distillation' — a claim that, together with his previously released self-hosted open-source AI workspace odysseus, makes him a rare top-tier creator deeply engaged in the local-model ecosystem.

Confirmed

• PewDiePie released the open-source model Ajax, based on Qwen 3.5 9B, positioned as 'uncensored' and runnable on a home PC.
• According to his own account (relayed by @Hesamation and @likeastar20), he used Sol to generate seed data for distillation training; after the first ban he appealed and was reinstated, but running Sol again got him banned immediately — twice in total.
• He mocked big tech: 'They built AI by stealing our data, but consumers aren't allowed a slice.'

Unconfirmed

• Whether the bans were actually for 'stealing hidden chain-of-thought' — this is an inference from the timing collision between OpenAI's report and PewDiePie's account; OpenAI has not named or confirmed the specific reason for the bans.

Why it matters

• @aakashgupta noted that OpenAI had just published a report disclosing a coordinated operation to steal its hidden reasoning traces, and a day later PewDiePie posted a video saying he was banned twice over distillation — directly sparking public scrutiny of OpenAI's terms barring the use of CoT outputs to train competing models.
• A top-tier creator personally demonstrating the feasibility of local uncensored models and openly challenging platform terms has pushed the 'compliance boundaries of distilling large models' controversy from developer circles into the mainstream.

2026-10-01 ~ 2026-10-03 · 5 related posts

• [source] PewDiePie launches Ajax, an uncensored open-source model fine-tuned from Qwen 3.5 9B — shadowrun456 · 2026-10-01
• [source] PewDiePie gets banned twice by OpenAI for using Sol to distill training data — Hesamation · 2026-10-01
• PewDiePie Says OpenAI Banned Him for Distilling Chain-of-Thought into His Own Model — burny_tech · 2026-10-02
• PewDiePie Says OpenAI Banned Him Twice Over Reasoning-Trace Extraction — aakashgupta · 2026-10-02
• PewDiePie Unveils 'Uncensored' Home-PC AI Model Ajax, Banned Twice by OpenAI — robleclerc · 2026-10-03