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Block's new AI model Dessa was trained entirely on human speech to catch emotions text-based models miss

Technology · en

Block's new AI model Dessa was trained entirely on human speech to catch emotions text-based models miss

The Decoder · Oct 24, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

Block, the company behind Square and Cash App, has introduced Dessa, a speech model that processes audio directly instead of converting it to text first. Dessa is designed to recognize emotions, sarcasm, and pauses in real time. The model runs locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max but isn't publicly available yet.…