Opera is adding its free browser AI, Aria, to Opera Mini, its popular Android-based browser with over 100 million users across the world. This update brings powerful AI capabilities, such as up-to-date information from the web, research assistance, content summarisation, and image generation, directly into the browser at no additional cost.
“AI is rapidly becoming an integral part of the daily internet experience, and we are seeing a great interest in AI solutions among South Africans, so bringing Aria to Opera Mini is a natural addition to our most-downloaded browser. With the integration of our built-in AI, we are excited to explore how AI can further enhance the feature set our South African users rely on every day,” said Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile at Opera.
Opera Mini is known and appreciated for numerous unique features – from live football scores to the built-in digital wallet MiniPay, and now also Aria.
Addressing data costs
While internet access is becoming more available for South Africans, the cost of the internet is disproportionately high compared to the income or GDP per capita. According to an Opera survey from March 2025, 80% of South Africans said data is too expensive, and over two-thirds (69%) reported regularly running out of data before the end of the month. Data costs remain a key concern in the country.
For years, Opera Mini has played a role in improving internet accessibility across South Africa. Opera Mini’s turbo data-saving mode can reduce data usage by up to 90% compared to other major browsers. For the past three years, Opera has saved South Africans an equivalent of $10 million in data (6 million GB) through its data compression technology. The free data campaigns, active since 2020, allow South Africans using Opera Mini on the MTN network to benefit from 3 GB each month for free, which can be used for anything, including interacting with Aria. Since 2022, Opera has invested millions of dollars in free data campaigns in South Africa, bridging the digital divide and ensuring information access.
With Aria integrated into Opera Mini, users get the benefits of an advanced AI tool without sacrificing data. Aria is optimised for minimal data consumption and is included within Opera’s free daily data bundles in South Africa.
Aria, Opera’s native built-in AI
Aria browser AI integrates into Opera's browsers on both desktop and mobile to enable an accessible chat-based interface with AI. It enhances user interaction through information retrieval, text or code generation, image generation and understanding. Aria is powered by Opera’s own 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.
Aria is now available across all Opera browsers. Opera Mini can be downloaded or updated via the Google Play Store, with Aria available in the browser.
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