Block announces Dessa artificial intelligence voice model trained on human speech

Block, the financial technology company co-founded by Jack Dorsey, announced an artificial intelligence model called Dessa, according to reports by The Verge, FourWeekMBA, and The Verge AI. FourWeekMBA reported that the voice model was built by training exclusively on speech datasets. [1][2][3][5]

The Verge AI reported that the model was trained from scratch on nothing but human conversation. To demonstrate the technology, Block shared conversational logs showing interactions between the software and human participants. The interactions exhibited a natural conversational flow, though early demonstrations included minor errors such as misidentifying a speaker named Ragavan Thurairatnam as Ronaldo. [1]

The development of Dessa is led by Ragavan Thurairatnam, according to The Verge AI. Jack Patrick Dorsey serves as a leader at Block, a company that operates financial services including Square, Cash App, Afterpay, Bitkey, and Tidal, according to Wikipedia. [1][5]