PewDiePie Pauses the Release of Ajax, His Own AI Model, to Optimize It

What happened

PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, unveiled Ajax in a YouTube video. A countdown on his site pointed to a release on October 3 at 08:25 Japan time. Now the release is on hold while he works on improving the model.

Reports before the pause said Ajax wasn’t available to download as of October 2, with no final model card, public benchmarks, or confirmed license. One report found that the “Download Ajax here” link in his video description opened a page asking people to contribute training data to Odysseus, not a model download.

First, what is Ajax?

An AI model is the “brain” behind a chatbot. Most people use one through a company’s website, such as ChatGPT. A local model runs on your own computer instead, so your emails and searches don’t go to anyone else’s servers.

Ajax is that kind of model. It’s a fine-tuned version of Alibaba’s free Qwen 3.5 model, which means he took an existing model and trained it further for specific jobs. It has 9 billion parameters, the settings that make up a model’s size. That’s small next to the giants behind the big chatbots, which is why it can fit on a home computer.

Its home is Odysseus, a self-hosted AI workspace he launched in May. The pitch is an assistant that handles web search, browsing, email, calendar and to-do tasks.

Why so small? He said he first planned a larger model, then reconsidered because fewer people would be able to run it.

The OpenAI bans

PewDiePie says OpenAI banned his account twice while he built Ajax. He says it was restored after an appeal and then banned again. One ban explicitly cited “distillation”.

Distillation means using one AI’s answers to teach another. Think of copying a top student’s homework to train a new student. We found no statement from OpenAI in the coverage, so this is his account of events.

The “uncensored” part

AI models are trained to refuse some requests. Ajax’s page says its refusal behavior has been removed for a “freer, less restricted AI experience”. He reached that with a technique called ablation, which he compares to “brain surgery”.

He says he still drew a line: causing harm to other people or yourself. That is his description. No independent safety testing is public, so nobody outside the project has checked it.

Can your computer run it?

Nobody can say yet, because Ajax isn’t out. One analysis of the base Qwen model put its needs at roughly 22GB of graphics memory in full form, or 11GB in a lighter form. Ajax could differ. If you want to try it on release day, watch for the “lighter” versions.

A warning: fake Ajax money

A cryptocurrency token called “$Ajax” appeared about a minute after his video went live. One analyst noted that there’s no evidence PewDiePie or the Odysseus team are involved. Don’t buy anything called Ajax unless it comes directly from his own channels.

What we don’t know

Who should care