Block, the financial technology company led by Jack Dorsey, has introduced a new artificial intelligence model named Dessa. Unlike many contemporary models that leverage vast crawls of the internet, Dessa was trained from scratch using human conversation data. The Verge recently reported on the model’s debut, highlighting its distinct personality. Early demonstrations shared by project lead Ragavan Thurairatnam suggest that the model mimics the nuances of social interaction, which can result in exchanges that feel slightly awkward or uncanny to the user.
Focus on Social Interaction
The development of Dessa represents a shift in how Block approaches machine learning. While the company is primarily known for its payment services through Square and Cash App, it has increasingly focused on foundational technology under Dorsey’s leadership. By training a model exclusively on conversational data rather than general web text, the team appears to be prioritizing the social flow of dialogue over broad knowledge retrieval. This approach aligns with a broader industry interest in creating AI assistants that feel more relatable, even if those interactions currently mirror the social friction found in new human friendships.
Technical Specifications and Availability
Much about the technical architecture and availability of Dessa remains undisclosed. The announcement did not specify the size of the model in terms of parameters, nor did it clarify whether Block intends to release the weights to the public or keep the technology proprietary. It is also unknown what specific sources were used to compile the human conversation dataset or how the company filtered that data for safety and bias. Furthermore, Block has not yet detailed how Dessa will be integrated into its existing ecosystem of financial products or if it is intended as a standalone consumer product.
As the project progresses, the industry will likely watch to see if this conversational focus provides a functional advantage over more generalized AI models.
Lead image: Vie Studio / Pexels
