Jack Dorsey's Company Block Introduces Dessa: An AI Model Mimicking Human Conversation

Block, founded by Jack Dorsey, has announced the development of Dessa, a new artificial intelligence model trained from scratch entirely on human speech. According to Dessa lead Ragavan Thurairatnam, the model functions as a true conversational system by avoiding the tendency of other voice models to reduce speech into text.

The team behind the Dessa project highlighted three core motivational points: curiosity, improving understanding between humans and AI, and safety. Noting that current voice-based artificial intelligence systems are frequently insensitive to human emotion and timing, the team stated that this situation could pose safety risks in critical situations. The model aims to learn human speech patterns to recognize emotional cues and provide a natural conversational flow.

Presentations of the model included guessing games, movie discussions, and comparisons with OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 model. During the demonstrations, it was noted that although Dessa occasionally made mistakes or misidentified the speaker, it exhibited a more natural delivery. For the model, which can run locally on MacBook Pro M4 Max or higher hardware, Block plans to provide early access to a small group of AI safety researchers to better examine its capabilities and safety implications.