Dessa is Block's radical new voice AI — trained only on human speech, with no text at all. It listens and talks at the same time, hears emotion, laughs mid-sentence, and runs on a laptop. We cover it every day: news, deep dives, guides and honest analysis.
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Dessa AI is Block's full-duplex voice model trained only on human speech — no text at all. Here's what it is, who built it, what it can do, and when you can try it.
Read article →Deep DiveHow does Dessa AI actually work? The speech-only training, full-duplex architecture, single-rack training run and laptop inference behind Block's voice model — explained plainly.
Read article →GuideWant to try Dessa AI? Where the real waitlist is, who gets early access first, what Block has (and hasn't) announced about price and release date — plus how to spot scams.
Read article →Not yet. Block unveiled Dessa on October 23, 2026 as a research preview. A public waitlist is open on Block's official page, and early access goes first to a small group of AI safety researchers.
Block has announced no pricing at all. Joining the waitlist is free. Anyone charging you for Dessa access today is not Block.
Most voice AI converts your speech to text, thinks in text, then reads the answer back — losing tone, emotion and timing. Dessa skips text entirely: audio in, audio out, learned purely from listening to human conversation.
Block, Inc. — Jack Dorsey's company behind Square, Cash App, Bitkey and Proto. The Dessa lab is a small research team founded by former members of the Toronto deep-learning startup Dessa.
Dessa is still a research preview. Join the free DessaAI Daily list and we will email you the day access opens — plus the week's biggest Dessa stories, once a week. No spam, no hype.
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