Audience
AI safety researchers and developers evaluating or building speech-based conversational AI.
About Dessa
Dessa is Block's speech-to-speech artificial intelligence model for conversational voice research and applications. It takes audio input and produces audio output directly, without converting speech into text as an intermediate step. Trained from scratch on human conversation rather than text, the model supports full-duplex interaction, listening and speaking at the same time, and runs locally on a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip or better. It captures conversational cues such as emotion, sarcasm, laughter, pauses, and turn-taking that can be lost in text-based pipelines. Dessa is intended for AI safety researchers and developers studying voice-model behavior, privacy, and real-time interaction. It is a speech model for research and development, not a general-purpose business application or hosted voice-agent platform.
Other Popular Alternatives & Related Software
MiniMax Speech 2.8
MiniMax Speech 2.8 is a next-generation AI speech model built to make synthetic voice feel alive, expressive, and deeply human. It focuses on performance in real-world voice agent scenarios, combining ultra-fast response, richer emotional expression, cleaner audio, and stronger cross-lingual performance for products that need natural spoken interaction. Speech 2.8 is designed to reduce the distance between AI voice and real human communication, giving developers and creators more control over how a voice sounds, reacts, and carries meaning. It supports flexible emotion control, allowing users to shape delivery with moods, tone, and expressive direction instead of relying on flat or robotic speech. It can produce speech with more natural pauses, cadence, emphasis, and emotional texture, helping AI characters, assistants, narrators, and interactive agents sound more believable across longer conversations.
Learn more
Grok Voice Think Fast 2.0
Grok Voice Think Fast 2.0 is xAI’s flagship voice model for building real-time assistants, phone agents, and interactive voice systems that stream audio and text bidirectionally over WebSocket. Developers can configure system instructions, high or no reasoning effort, built-in or custom voices, automatic server-side voice activity detection, silence duration, idle re-engagement, playback speed, and session resumption after temporary disconnects. It accepts PCM, G.711 μ-law, G.711 A-law, and Opus audio through JSON or raw binary frames, with configurable PCM sample rates from telephone quality to 48 kHz. It supports more than 20 languages with native-quality accents, automatic language detection, natural responses in the speaker’s language, and seamless code-switching. Language hints and up to 100 key terms improve transcription of regional speech, names, products, codes, addresses, and specialized terminology, while pronunciation replacements correct spoken output.
Learn more
Higgs Realtime
Higgs Realtime is a production-quality, real-time speech-to-speech model and API built for natural, continuous conversation. It is an end-to-end, instruction-tuned, audio-native model that can understand audio, text, or both and generate high-quality responses, while also functioning as a text LLM when given text alone. Designed for live voice agents, it follows conversations, handles interruptions, adapts when requests change mid-sentence, and carries multi-step workflows through to completion. The model is trained specifically for voice-agent reflexes such as natural turn-taking, conversational cadence, tone adaptation, spoken tool preambles, multi-turn state tracking, and robust instruction following through changing requests. Semantic turn detection helps distinguish a completed turn from a pause, while multilingual and code-switched understanding supports more than 100 languages without per-language setup.
Learn more
Grok Voice 3.0
Grok Voice 3.0 is a speech-to-speech model offered through the Grok Voice Agent API for developers building real-time voice applications. It accepts audio and text and returns spoken audio or text through a WebSocket session, supporting conversational turn-taking, interruptions, and function calling. Developers can connect the model to custom functions and server-side tools, including web search, X search, collections, and remote MCP servers. The API is intended for interactive voice agents such as customer-support and service-call experiences, and is also used for voice interactions in Tesla vehicles and Grok Bot. Billing is usage-based, with audio charged per minute and text input events billed separately. The API documentation includes setup instructions and examples for Python and JavaScript clients.
Learn more
Integrations
No integrations listed.
Company Information
Block
Founded: 2009
United States
block.xyz/dessa
Videos and Screen Captures
Dark application screen with a pale circular abstract icon centered above the transcript text, “Human winter is coming for sure but you.”
Other Useful Business Software
Paessler: Easy to Use With Enterprise Power. Free Trial
You shouldn't have to choose between a monitoring tool that's easy to use and one that's powerful enough for a complex environment. PRTG's low-code interface lets any admin build dashboards, set alerts and monitor devices without scripting, while custom sensors and full API access are there when your team needs deeper control. One platform, no compromise. Download a free 30-day trial now.
Product Details
Platforms Supported
Mac
