Payments company Block has introduced an artificial intelligence model trained solely using human conversation.

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Dessa, as the model is known, learned to hold real-time conversations just by listening, Block said in its announcement Friday (Oct. 23).

“As far as we know, Dessa is the world’s first AI you can have a realistic live conversation with that was trained only from human speech,” the company added.

Added Jack Dorsey, Block’s co-founder: “Talking with it feels like talking with a person … full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.”

A report by CoinDesk noted that Dessa’s rollout attracted both praise and concern on social media. Fans of the AI were impressed with what they called its natural-sounding voice.

X user Alexander Hoff said he’d never “heard anything artificial that sounded so … human,” while Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao cited potential uses in education, where natural voice interactions could help children learn via conversation.

“This might be very good for GiggleAcademy. Teaching kids in current ‘AI voice’ was a challenge,” Zhao wrote, referring to his education project.

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Others voiced concerns among others about the technology’s potential use for deception, like filmmaker Justine Bateman, who argued that a human-sounding AI voice could “trick people into lowering their guard.”

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