Dessa, as the model is known, learned to hold real-time conversations just by listening, Block said in its announcement Friday (Oct. 23).
“As far as we know, Dessa is the world’s first AI you can have a realistic live conversation with that was trained only from human speech,” the company added.
Added Jack Dorsey, Block’s co-founder: “Talking with it feels like talking with a person … full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.”
A report by CoinDesk noted that Dessa’s rollout attracted both praise and concern on social media. Fans of the AI were impressed with what they called its natural-sounding voice.
X user Alexander Hoff said he’d never “heard anything artificial that sounded so … human,” while Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao cited potential uses in education, where natural voice interactions could help children learn via conversation.
“This might be very good for GiggleAcademy. Teaching kids in current ‘AI voice’ was a challenge,” Zhao wrote, referring to his education project.
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Others voiced concerns among others about the technology’s potential use for deception, like filmmaker Justine Bateman, who argued that a human-sounding AI voice could “trick people into lowering their guard.”
And journalist Shiv Aroor had similar concerns about fraud, arguing that scam calls were “about to attain pandemic level.”
Writing about conversational AI earlier this year, PYMNTS argued that voice assistants have mostly solved the problem of being able to understand what people said, with competition now centering on whether AI can do something useful once it understands its instructions.
“Many business processes already function like conversations, even when they occur through email threads, spreadsheets and enterprise platforms,” that report said.
For example, a warehouse supervisor can inquire about inventory shortages while walking the floor, while a field technician can diagnose equipment without pausing to type. For companies in the B2B space, the implication is workflow compression, with voice AI agents combining multiple corporate interactions into one conversation.
“Consider accounts payable,” the report added. “Instead of navigating multiple ERP screens, a finance manager could simply ask: ‘Which invoices are becoming high risk? Contact suppliers requesting payment extensions under $50,000 and prepare a liquidity summary for tomorrow’s CFO meeting.’“
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