Opera adds Google’s Gemini to its browsers

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Opera browser users can get more up-to-date information and more conversational responses as it integrates Google’s Gemini AI models into its existing Aria AI extension.

Aria, released last year, acts like an AI assistant to answer user queries, write code, and perform other tasks. According to Opera, Aria does not rely on one AI model to respond to users but chooses the AI model it feels will work best for the specific task. With this new integration, Aria can tap into Gemini, which the company says provides Opera users “with the most current information at high performance.”

Aria is available on all Opera browsers, including its gaming browser, Opera GX.

The Gemini family of large language models consists of several models of differing sizes and capabilities. Gemini Nano is the smallest and is primarily geared toward devices like mobile phones. Gemini Pro 1.5 and Gemini Pro 1.5 Flash are more medium-sized, and Gemini Ultra is Google’s most capable model. Gemini Pro and Gemini Ultra power the Gemini chatbot.

With the new integration, Opera users can hear Aria read its responses out loud “in a conversational-like fashion.” Google’s text-to-audio AI models power Aria’s read-aloud capability in a way that’s similar to ChatGPT’s Read Aloud feature, which reads results from the chatbot. (And that once featured the voice Sky, which OpenAI recently pulled.)

This is not the first time Opera has worked with Google’s AI models. Aria added an image generation feature in April using Google’s Imagen 2 model, which lets users generate pictures straight from the Opera browser.