Block Introduces Dessa Speech Model Trained Only on Human Conversation

Oct 24, 2026
Block introduces Dessa, a full duplex speech model that learned language and conversational timing from human speech without text or pretrained models.

Block introduces Dessa, a full duplex speech model trained from scratch solely on human conversation, as detailed on the company's website. Block describes it as the first model for realistic live conversation trained only on human speech, without text or pretrained models.

Dessa processes speech directly and listens while speaking. It can interrupt, provide brief verbal responses, adjust its volume, and interpret signals including emotion, sarcasm, laughter, pauses, and changes in tone. Inference runs faster than real time, and the model can run locally on a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip or better.

The research team trained Dessa using one NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system. Block plans to give a small group of AI safety researchers early access to test the model for risks.

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