Block's new voice AI learned to talk without reading any text.
The payments company Block unveiled Dessa on Friday, a voice model trained only on recorded human speech. It never converts speech to text, so it laughs, pauses and picks up tone, and it runs on a laptop. Nobody outside Block can use it yet, as the company first wants safety researchers to test it.
Why it mattersVoices this human will make it harder to tell an AI from a real caller. Treat unexpected calls asking for money or codes with extra suspicion, even when the voice sounds warm.
Read in the app — free, in 9 languages
Related stories
Moonshot's new Kimi trails only three models on an independent index.2026-10-24A free Chinese image model passed a million downloads in a week.
2026-10-23Canva trained its first image model on templates, not photos.
2026-10-23Hugging Face built a chatbot that reads DNA and explains mutations.
2026-10-22A startup says AI did most of the work on its new coding model.
2026-10-22