The company’s researchers posted multiple examples of conversations with Dessa where the agent had different voices, cadences, and emotions. For instance, in the conversation, the bot said it was tired from work, and at that point it sounded tired.
In the example below, the bot was talking about the person making it comfortable while sounding emotional and almost breaking down.
Another one shows a Block team member playing a game with the voice assistant.
The company said that the model can run locally on a consumer-grade computer such as a MacBook M4 Max or better. However, there is no public access to Dessa at the moment, and Block has put out a call for safety researchers to test the model. This is likely to test out cases where a voice agent could trick people on the other end.
Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.