NEWS · MODELS · #2511
Block announces Dessa, a speech-to-speech model trained on human conversation
Block unveiled Dessa, which it describes as a "true speech-to-speech" model trained from scratch on human conversation and demonstrated via audio chat examples that can sound natural but occasionally awkward. Block says Dessa can run locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max or better and will be shared early with a small group of AI safety researchers.
KEY POINTS
- Block unveiled Dessa, which it describes as a "true speech-to-speech" model trained from scratch on human conversation and demonstrated via audio chat examples that can sound natural but occasionally awkward.
- Block says Dessa can run locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max or better and will be shared early with a small group of AI safety researchers.
- Dessa, if its claims hold, points to voice-native models trained directly from speech that can run locally — relevant for privacy, user experience, and safety research.
WHY IT MATTERS
Dessa, if its claims hold, points to voice-native models trained directly from speech that can run locally — relevant for privacy, user experience, and safety research.
SOURCES & TIMELINE
3Jack Dorsey’s Block released a new voice model out of the company’s research lab that runs locally and sounds strangely human with its expressions like laughs, pauses, and cries. The company said the model, called Dessa, is trained fully on human speech and a single NVIDIA GPU. Dessa is a full-duplex model, which means it can talk and listen at the same time, just like the GPT-Live model OpenAI released earlier this…
You have got to listen to these conversations with Block’s new Dessa AI model. 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 betwee…
Block, the company behind Square and Cash App, has unveiled an AI speech model called Dessa. Block says Dessa is the first AI model trained entirely on human speech, with no text data at all, built from scratch. Instead of converting audio to text first, Dessa processes speech directly as audio. That lets it pick up on emotions, sarcasm, laughter, and pauses in real time. The model supports full-duplex communicatio…