Block Unveils Dessa, a Speech Model Trained Only on Speech
Block's AI lab has released Dessa, a speech-to-speech model that can hold two-way conversations. It was trained only on human conversation audio and reportedly runs on a MacBook Pro M4 Max. Block has not shared its size, benchmark scores or model weights yet, so its real performance is still unclear.
Quick glossaryBlock, Full-duplex, Model weights
- Block
- A US financial technology company best known for the Square payments system and the Cash App mobile payment app.
- Full-duplex
- A way of talking where both sides can speak and listen at the same time, like a phone call.
- Model weights
- The learned numbers inside an AI model that let it work, and which developers need to run it themselves.
Burning Potato score: 63%