Norwegian browser development company Opera Software today announced the addition of its Aria browser artificial intelligence (AI) to Android-based Opera Mini.
With the AI browser addition, the company says it is looking to attract more users on the African continent, where the majority of its subscribers are based.
Opera Mini is designed for mobile devices and slower internet connections. Its data compression routes web traffic through Opera’s servers to compress content before sending it to a mobile device. This helps save data and load pages faster.
Internet browsers are increasingly integrating AI features to enhance the user experience, streamline workflows and stay competitive in a rapidly-evolving tech landscape.
As users now expect more than a static browser, Microsoft and Google have embedded AI directly into their browsers – Edge (Copilot) and Chrome (Gemini), respectively – offering users capabilities such as summarising articles, generating e-mails and coding assistance.
According to Statscounter, Chrome has the biggest browser market share in the world at 66.17%. Safari follows at 17.59%, Edge (5.18%) and Opera (2.14%).
Putting Africa first
In an e-mail interview with ITWeb, Jørgen Arnesen, executive vice-president of mobile at Opera, says Opera Mini has 100 million users globally, with the majority in Africa. He notes that South Africa is one of the key markets for Opera Mini, with “millions of users”, since the browser was built to address data costs and the digital divide.
According to Arnesen, 10 years ago, the internet penetration rate across Sub-Saharan Africa was low. “For example, in SA only around 50% of the population had access to the web, but the majority couldn’t afford constant and stable connection.
“Now, nearly 80% of South Africans are online, which is also reflected in our user base since, for many, Opera became the first window to the web thanks to its data-saving capabilities and free data campaigns.
“Thanks to its up to 90% data compression technology, Opera Mini is becoming the most popular browser of choice in the region. For the past three years, Opera has saved South Africans an equivalent of $10 million in data (six million GB) through its data compression technology.
“Since 2020, we have invested over $100 million in Africa as part of our ‘Africa first strategy’ and South Africa has been one of the key recipients of these investments. For years, we’ve been partnering with MTN to provide all Opera Mini users with 3GB of data for free every month. Currently, over five million people in Africa use free data campaigns every single day. We’re planning to further look for ways to support our users in Africa and invest in the region.”
The company notes that with the Aria update, Opera Mini is offering users access to AI that can retrieve up-to-date information from the web, serve as a research assistant, help them to learn new skills, or summarise content online and create images inside the chat.
“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,” Arnesen says.
Browsing with AI
Aria integrates into Opera’s browsers on desktop and mobile to enable an accessible chat-based interface to AI. It enhances user interaction through information retrieval, text or code generation, image generation and understanding, the company explains.
Aria is powered by Opera’s Composer AI engine, which utilises OpenAI and Google AI technologies to provide the most relevant answers, and it integrates image generation through Google’s Imagen3 fast model, it adds.
To use Aria, Opera Mini users need to update to the latest version of the browser. They can access Aria in the main menu, or at the bottom of the start page, says the firm, adding that users can then ask questions, generate text and images, summarise text-based content and get real-time web answers.
“We see strong demand across our own South African user base for an AI integrated in the browser. It’s a new way to interact with the web. Especially in Opera Mini’s case, we know that users are curious about AI. In a survey, over 80% of users say they would like to have an AI inside a browser. We also believe AI provides new great opportunities to improve user experience with the browser,” Arnesen notes.
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