Jack Dorsey’s Block made an AI model that talks to you like an awkward new friend
Jack Dorsey’s company Block has introduced Dessa, an AI model trained exclusively on human speech rather than written text. The model is designed to run locally on high-end hardware and aims to create more natural, timing-sensitive voice interactions.
Why it matters
This represents a shift in AI development toward speech-native models that mimic human conversational nuances, potentially changing how we interact with voice assistants.
Jack Dorsey’s Block announced an AI model called Dessa that’s trained “from scratch on nothing but human conversation,” and to show off the model, Block shared chats it has had with humans that can occasionally be a little awkward and uncanny.
Take this one, for example, shared by Dessa lead Ragavan Thurairatnam. The conversation between the model and the speaker does have a mostly natural back and forth (though for some reason, the model initially mistakes the speaker for somebody named “Ronaldo”).
[Media: https://twitter.com/RagavanThurair/status/2113671324400861645]
Here’s a video of Dessa playing a guessing game over voice:
[Media: https://twitter.com/RagavanThurair/status/2113704911749911028]
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