Opera has announced that its new browser AI, Aria, is now available to all users of Opera browser for Android. The service is free to access and is made possible in collaboration with OpenAI and GPT.
Unlike ChatGPT, which only knows information up to its cutoff point in 2021, Aria is able to get live results from the web, enhancing the results. Unlike some of the other AI tools out there, Aria is available to users with a free Opera account, so it’s quite easy to start using it.
"AI has marked a profound and rapid change in our lives. How we work, how we acquire information, what we expect from our browsers: everything is changing," said Stefan Stjernelund, VP Product, Opera for Android. "We're extremely excited to put the potential of AI in everybody's pocket, so that users can have a native AI tool like Aria right there when they're on-the-go."
One interesting aspect of Aria that Opera is touting is the Composer infrastructure which connects the AI to multiple AI models. In the future, the company hopes to integrate other capabilities into Composer such as search services powered by its partners.
One of the nice things about Aria on Android is that it’s more like a piece of software on your phone, it feels more native than the webpage experience you get with Google Bard or ChatGPT. Aside from getting responses, you can view chat history, create new chats, and share or copy responses that the AI produces.
Another interesting observation about Aria, is that it seems to get to the point a lot quicker than ChatGPT. ChatGPT has a tendency to surround its core answers with disclaimers or reminders that its information isn’t as up-to-date, this doesn’t seem to be the case with Aria.
Finally, if you open any links that Aria provides (and it provides plenty), the webpage will open and Aria will minimize to a bubble allowing you to quickly resume your conversation with the AI.
Aria should be available in the Opera for Android menu. If you cannot yet see it in the stable version of the browser, you can grab Opera Beta while you wait to try it out.
