Block's Dessa: a conversational AI model trained on human conversation alone
From the AI digest for 2026-10-23
What happened: The Verge reports (October 23, ~3:32 PM Eastern) that Jack Dorsey's Block announced an AI model called Dessa, trained — per the company — "from scratch on nothing but human conversation." To show the model, Block shared chats it has had with humans that can occasionally be awkward and uncanny; one example shared by Dessa lead Ragavan Thurairatnam runs mostly natural, with the model initially mistaking the speaker for someone named Ronald.
What's genuinely new: Debut for Block's Dessa on the record — a conversational model from the payments company, evidenced by curated demo transcripts. Announced with shared chats, not a shipped product: no public availability, model size, or evaluation detail in the capture.
Watch: public access and terms; the technical substance of the human-conversation-only training claim; whether the awkward-transcript framing survives wider demonstration; what Block intends the model for.
Links: The Verge