Block unveils Dessa, a speech-only conversational AI model
Original title: Jack Dorsey’s Block made an AI model that talks to you like an awkward new friend
Block says it runs locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max or better and will give safety researchers early access.
Jack Dorsey's Block announced Dessa, which the team says was trained from scratch only on human conversation and operates speech-to-speech. Block published sample chats and voice clips, including awkward exchanges and a comparison with OpenAI's GPT-Live-1. The stated reasons are curiosity, better human-AI understanding, and detecting emotion in speech. Early access is limited to a small group of AI safety researchers.
Unconfirmed: Training and capability claims come from Block; the article includes no independent evaluation.
- The team says everything Dessa knows came from human speech, not written text.
- One published chat shows the model initially calling the speaker Ronaldo.
- A small group of AI safety researchers will get early access.
- AI models
- DessaGPT-Live-1
From the original article
2 min read at theverge.com
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.
By Jay Peters · theverge.com
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