Models · 2026-10-23

Jack Dorsey's Block made an AI model that talks like an awkward new friend

Block, led by Jack Dorsey, has announced Dessa, an AI model trained only on human conversation, and shared chats with it that sometimes come across as awkward.

✨ What Dessa is

Block, the company led by Jack Dorsey, announced an AI model called Dessa. According to the company, it was trained "from scratch on nothing but human conversation." In other words, the model learned language from how people talk to each other rather than from the large volumes of written text most AI models use.

📌 Why people are talking about it

To show how Dessa works, Block shared several of its conversations with people. Some of them are a little awkward and even uncanny, like talking to a new acquaintance who hasn't figured out how to keep the conversation going. One such example was shared by Dessa lead Ragavan Thurairatnam.

Sources: 🔗 The Verge — AI