Opera and Google Cloud have expanded their partnership. By integrating Google's Gemini models, the Opera browser gets new AI capabilities for image and speech generation.
Opera's Aria browser AI is powered by Opera's multi-LLM engine called Composer AI", which selects the best language model for each task. The addition of the Gemini models allows Aria to provide users with higher quality, more up-to-date information, the company says.
Opera has been testing AI capabilities in its browsers for more than a year, the company says. All of the company's major browsers, including the Opera GX gaming browser, now offer access to the Aria browser assistant.
The latest feature drop in partnership with Google Cloud brings free image creation based on Google's Imagen 2 model to Aria in Opera. The models run on Google's Vertex AI platform.
Aria can also speak its responses using Google's text-to-speech technology for conversational interactions.
Opera believes there won't be just one dominant AI in the future, but rather an ecosystem of different providers and models. The company aims to stay flexible with "Composer AI" to pick the best model for each scenario.
To meet the growing demand for computing resources, Opera recently opened an AI data center in Iceland, which it claims is powered by clean energy and equipped with Nvidia DGX units.
Google is also reportedly in talks with Apple to integrate Gemini into iOS. However, OpenAI is likely to get a deal first. Apple is expected to announce its plans for generative AI and ChatGPT integration at WWDC in June. Support for Google AI may come later, discussions are still ongoing.
