The Verge's verdict: an awkward new friend — it mistook one caller for Ronaldo

Jack Dorsey called Dessa ‘the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built’ in a post viewed more than 6.7 million times. The Verge's first read was warmer on the idea than the demos: mostly natural, occasionally awkward — in one recording the model greets a caller as ‘Ronaldo’ and has to be corrected.

Block has published no parameter count, benchmarks, pricing, or weights yet, so the evidence so far is its own demo recordings — including one where Dessa talks with OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 voice model. The company says more recordings are coming.