Block's Dessa voice model runs locally, not yet public

Dessa can talk and listen at once and shows emotion such as laughter and pauses, according to Block, which says it runs on a consumer computer.

Block, the company led by Jack Dorsey, released a voice model called Dessa from its research lab.

Dessa is full-duplex, meaning it can talk and listen at the same time.

Block says the model was trained on human speech and a single NVIDIA GPU, and that it can run on a MacBook M4 Max or better.

The model conveys emotion such as laughs, pauses and crying; how that emotion is controlled is not clear.

Dessa is not publicly accessible, and Block has invited safety researchers to test it.

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