Audience

AI safety researchers and developers evaluating or building speech-based conversational AI.

About Dessa

Dessa is Block's speech-to-speech artificial intelligence model for conversational voice research and applications. It takes audio input and produces audio output directly, without converting speech into text as an intermediate step. Trained from scratch on human conversation rather than text, the model supports full-duplex interaction, listening and speaking at the same time, and runs locally on a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip or better. It captures conversational cues such as emotion, sarcasm, laughter, pauses, and turn-taking that can be lost in text-based pipelines. Dessa is intended for AI safety researchers and developers studying voice-model behavior, privacy, and real-time interaction. It is a speech model for research and development, not a general-purpose business application or hosted voice-agent platform.

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Integrations

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Ratings/Reviews

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Company Information

Block
Founded: 2009
United States
block.xyz/dessa

Videos and Screen Captures

Dark application screen with a pale circular abstract icon centered above the transcript text, “Human winter is coming for sure but you.”

Dark application screen with a pale circular abstract icon centered above the transcript text, “Human winter is coming for sure but you.”

Dark application screen with a pale circular abstract icon centered above the transcript text, “Human winter is coming for sure but you.”
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Product Details

Platforms Supported
Mac

Dessa Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What kinds of users and organization types does Dessa work with?
Q: What languages does Dessa support in their product?

Dessa Product Features