Opera integrates Aria AI to browser for 100M users worldwide

Opera is adding its browser AI, Aria, to Opera Mini, the Android-based browser with over 100M users worldwide.

With this update, Opera Mini is offering users across Africa and the world access to AI that can retrieve up-to-date information from the web, serve as a research assistant, help to learn new skills or summarise content online and create images inside the chat. This means Opera Mini is now providing a powerful AI experience integrated in the browser at no additional cost, all while saving data and not impacting the app’s size.

“AI is rapidly becoming an integral part of the daily internet experience – bringing Aria to Opera Mini is a natural addition to our most-downloaded browser. With the addition of our built-in AI, Aria, we’re excited to explore how AI can further enhance the feature set our users rely on every day,” said Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile.

Aria browser AI integrates into Opera’s browsers on both desktop and mobile to enable an accessible chat-based interface. It enhances user interaction through information retrieval, text or code generation, image generation and understanding.

Aria is powered by Opera’s Composer AI engine, which utilises both Openai and Google AI technologies to provide the most relevant answers, and it integrates image generation through Google’s Imagen3 fast model. With today’s update, Aria is now available across all Opera browsers.

To use Aria, users need to update to the latest browser version. They can access Aria in the main menu or at the bottom of the start page. Users can then ask questions, generate text and images, summarise text-based content, and get real-time web answers.

Opera Mini is the leading browser in Africa, with more than a billion downloads worldwide. The platform announced last year that it had crossed 1 million downloads across its markets in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. This is owing to region-specific offerings: live football scores, built-in digital wallet MiniPay.

Opera MiniPay is a self-custodial dollar stablecoin wallet seamlessly integrated into the Opera Mini browser for Android users and built on the Celo blockchain. The platform has unique features to save, send and receive funds instantly on their mobile phone at very cheap transaction charges.

Mento decentralised CUSD (Celo Dollar) stablecoins, integrated into the MiniPay ecosystem, offer multiple advantages, including mitigating currency volatility and providing a reliable store of value.

This is especially crucial in regions affected by hyperinflation and economic uncertainty, where stablecoins present a decentralised and accessible alternative to traditional financial services.

Similarly, for nearly 20 years, Opera Mini has played a key role in enabling internet access across Africa due to its lightweight design, data compression technology, and partnerships with local network providers to facilitate free data offers of 1.5GB monthly.

On the African continent, the cost of mobile data as a share of GDP is much higher than in Europe or in Brazil, which highlights the digital divide. According to a recent survey and as a result of the recent price surge in Nigeria, 59%* of respondents in Nigeria say data is too expensive, and over half admit they often run out of data before the end of the month.

In the face of these high data costs, it helps bridge the digital gap by offering affordable access to new technologies, including AI-powered features.

Launched in 2005, Opera Mini is a small, fast, and powerful browser. It comes with unique features such as Data Compression, Offline File Sharing, and a built-in ad-blocker. Today, Opera Mini has been downloaded over 1 billion times on the Google Play Store by people who chose it over the pre-installed browsers on Android mobile devices. Opera Mini has a 4.6-star rating on Google Play and has been reviewed by more than eight million people worldwide.