Uncensored Open-weight Models: Redistribution as the Persistence Layer

Abstract

A rapidly expanding ecosystem of actors is removing built-in safety guardrails from open-weight AI models. We profile this ecosystem by identifying key producers, downstream reproductions, and emerging applications. Between January 2024 and March 2026, we identified 3,471 original uncensored models on HuggingFace, each repackaged an average of 2.4 times; three actors account for 52% of all 8,164 compressed redistributions. Once quantized and mirrored across separate accounts, formats, and registries such as Ollama, these models persist regardless of upstream removal and become easier to deploy downstream. Of the 1,643 identified GitHub applications integrating uncensored large language models (ULLMs), 25% were classified as explicitly malicious.