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Jack Dorsey's Block unveils Dessa, a human-like local voice AI

By PulseAugur Editorial · [2 sources] ·

Jack Dorsey's company Block has developed Dessa, a novel full-duplex voice model capable of local operation on consumer hardware. This AI model is designed to produce human-like speech, complete with natural pauses, laughter, and emotional intonation, by training exclusively on human speech. Block is currently seeking safety researchers to test Dessa before its public release, aiming to explore its potential impact on social audio, creator voice work, and dubbing industries. AI

IMPACT This local, human-like voice AI could significantly alter social audio, voice acting, and dubbing industries.

RANK_REASON This is a product release from a company, but not a frontier AI lab.

Read on Mastodon — mastodon.social →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

Jack Dorsey's Block unveils Dessa, a human-like local voice AI

How we ranked this

Signal score
0 / 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, but not a frontier AI lab.
Source corroboration
2 independent sources
Multiple independent publishers reporting the same story raises confidence that it's real and newsworthy.
Topics
model release, product
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AI-industry relevance
High
Clearly on-topic for AI-industry coverage.
Story freshness
17 days old
Aged out of breaking-news scoring windows; ranking reflects the durable signal from the full source set.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [2]

  1. Mastodon — mastodon.social TIER_1 English(EN) · spookyd ·

    Jack Dorsey's Block released Dessa, a full-duplex voice model that runs locally and sounds strikingly human, with laughs, pauses and emotion. Trained only on sp

    Jack Dorsey's Block released Dessa, a full-duplex voice model that runs locally and sounds strikingly human, with laughs, pauses and emotion. Trained only on speech, it's not public yet, and Block is seeking safety researchers to test it. # AI # VoiceAI Read more: https:// techcr…

    LINKS techcrunch.com/…/blocks-new-voice-model-s…
  2. Mastodon — mastodon.social TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] ·

    Jack Dorsey's Block has unveiled Dessa, a full-duplex speech-to-speech model that listens and talks at once, with emotion, pauses and laughter produced by the v

    Jack Dorsey's Block has unveiled Dessa, a full-duplex speech-to-speech model that listens and talks at once, with emotion, pauses and laughter produced by the voice itself rather than bolted on as tags. Trained only on human speech on a single Nvidia GPU, it runs locally on consu…

    LINKS techcrunch.com/…/blocks-new-voice-model-s…

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