Jack Dorsey’s Block made an AI model that talks to you like an awkward new friend
Block released Dessa, a speech-to-speech AI model trained only on human conversation, with examples showing occasional awkwardness and natural interactions.Summary
Jack Dorsey’s Block has announced Dessa, an AI model trained from scratch solely on human conversation, designed to be a true speech-to-speech system that can run locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max or better. To demonstrate its capabilities, Block shared examples of Dessa’s chats with humans, which are mostly natural but sometimes awkward or uncanny—such as initially mistaking a speaker for someone named “Ronaldo” or going on unexpected tangents about Bryan Singer’s Superman films. The Dessa team says it built the model for curiosity, better understanding between humans and AI, and safety, noting that babies learn to talk without written words and that current voice AI often flattens speech into text and misses emotional cues. They plan to give a small group of AI safety researchers early access to the model.
(Source：The Verge)