Opera Mini Browser, Popular In Africa, Gets Big Ai Boost

In a statement on Wednesday, Opera Software said Aria's capabilities include AI chat and search as well as AI image generation.

"AI is rapidly becoming an integral part of the daily internet experience, and we're seeing great interest in AI solutions among South Africans, so bringing Aria to Opera Mini is a natural addition to our most downloaded browser," said Jrgen Arnesen, executive vice president for mobile at Opera, in the statement.

The company said Aria will be accessible free of charge through its browser. The cost of accessing the internet has been a focus for the company for many years, which Opera described as "unproportionately high" compared to other countries with a similar income-to-GDP ratio.

Opera Mini's data-saving mode can reduce data usage by up to 90 compared to other popular browsers, Opera Software has claimed. "For the past three years, Opera has saved South Africans over six million gigabytes, equivalent to US10-million R188-million, in data through its data compression technology," it said.

Another of Opera Mini's data-savings initiatives takes the form of free data campaigns that it has run in partnership with MTN since 2022. Through the campaigns, Opera Mini users on MTN enjoy 3GB of free data per month.