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Block unveils Dessa, a speech-to-speech AI model

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

Block, the company previously known as Square, has introduced Dessa, a novel speech-to-speech AI model. Unlike traditional models, Dessa processes audio directly, enabling it to listen and speak concurrently for a more natural conversational flow. The model is designed to run locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max and has been made available to a select group of AI safety researchers. AI

IMPACT This model could improve the naturalness and responsiveness of voice assistants and other real-time audio applications.

RANK_REASON This is a product release from a company that is not a frontier AI lab, and the model is not a foundational model.

Read on Mastodon — mastodon.social →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

Block unveils Dessa, a speech-to-speech AI model

How we ranked this

Signal score
13 / 100
Composite score across the factors below. Higher = stronger signal that this story matters right now.
Newsworthiness bucket
Tool
This is a product release from a company that is not a frontier AI lab, and the model is not a foundational model.
Source corroboration
Single-source cluster
Only one publisher covered this so far. Single-source stories can still rank when the publisher is high-authority, but they lack cross-source corroboration.
Topics
model release, product
Editorial topic classification. Feeds into how the story surfaces on /topic/<slug> hub pages and into the per-entity coverage mix.
AI-industry relevance
High
Clearly on-topic for AI-industry coverage.
Story freshness
Breaking (< 6h)
Fresh story with cross-source coverage still developing. Ranking may shift as more sources report.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [1]

  1. Mastodon — mastodon.social TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] ·

    Block, the payments firm formerly known as Square, has released Dessa, a speech-to-speech AI model trained from scratch on nothing but human conversation. It ha

    Block, the payments firm formerly known as Square, has released Dessa, a speech-to-speech AI model trained from scratch on nothing but human conversation. It handles audio directly instead of transcribing to text, so it can listen and speak at the same time, giving replies a more…

    LINKS gizmodo.com/check-out-the-many-uncanny-hu…

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