In April, Opera introduced its new browser, Opera One, with an elegant modular design that favors a dark theme and “flexible navigation”. This launch was bolstered by the launch today of an even more striking feature they had targeted months ago: integrating their own AI assistant, Aria, into the browser.

A free and always available artificial intelligence chatbot. The new version of the Opera browser is being refreshed with this chatbot called Aria, based on OpenAI GPT technology, as stated on the company’s official blog. This assistant is always available in the left sidebar of the browser and we can use it for free. This app is an evolution of Opera’s initial development in this area, presented last March.

Navigating with the help of ChatGPT. Opera’s AI-enabled browser is designed to increase users’ creativity and productivity by incorporating the power of artificial intelligence into the browser’s own functionality. Based on Opera’s own “Composer” engine, Aria does not include references or citations to its sources, but offers advanced features such as updated results, as Bing Chat already does in Microsoft Edge.

A chatbot that will increase its performance. Opera “Composer” infrastructure can be easily adapted to the company and will make it possible to connect Aria to different AI models. In the future, Aria can be expanded to integrate new features such as search services, thanks to Opera’s partners.

How does it work? Simply click the Aria button in the left sidebar to open a side panel where we can start asking all kinds of questions. In these answers, we may even ask you to show us the links. The answers are usually short and, as always, seemingly consistent.

Registration and privacy. Before using Aria, we need to sign in with our Opera account or create one if we don’t have one. In Opera, they explain that the texts we enter while using Aria are processed by Opera so that relevant responses can be given. Despite this, they guarantee that they do not share any data about the user with OpenAI. Chats are stored for a maximum of 30 days and we can always access them, but we can delete them at any time.

first impressions. We’ve already installed Opera’s new browser with Aria, and first impressions are bittersweet: while it’s capable of speaking and conversing in Spanish and providing accurate information in some cases, Aria is also prone to fabricating data or giving incorrect answers.

One is lime, the other is sand.. For example, he answered the question what Xataka is pretty well, but we asked him about the latest version of Opera and he told us that the latest version is the 2011 version with the Opera Presto 2.10 rendering engine. While trying to fix it and ask him about Opera One and Aria, the chatbot gave an error and asked us to change the subject.

The stimulus is not the traitor. Opera’s own executives warn that AI applications like Aria “have limits”. Thus, we may see harmful or subjective content and information that is false, inaccurate or misleading.

Aria has room for improvement. Aria’s features currently follow, for example, what Bing recommends in Microsoft Edge. In addition to providing up-to-date information, citations and references, Bing was more accurate in our tests – perhaps because it’s based on GPT-4, so it’s unclear which version Aria is based on – but soon it will also be possible to interact with the content we visit, Aria’s something it can’t currently do in Opera.

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