Really impressive demo. I have to say that, but I do worry with this kind of fidelity to a human interaction that people will get more drawn into AI relationships and replace human contact.

I like voice as a mode of interaction with AI, but it’s always been clear with current tech that I’m talking to AI (and yet folks still got drawn into fantasy relationships thanks to sycophantic models etc) - I imagine with voice models like Dessa that could be worse for humans. This kind of fidelity blurs the lines of who or what the human is talking to and lets humans fall into an isolated world where they believe they are “socializing.”

Now, we could argue this is not a negative, maybe it is actually healthy for those who are looking for social connection or lonely, but my gut feel is that is not the case for most. It worries me that this kind of model will actually cause further deterioration of human socialisation and human-to-human contact.