Aria gets Buffed in Opera GX

This content originally appeared on Opera News and was authored by Santiago Benavides García

We’ve been cooking! And today we’re bringing a new massive update for Aria. New features are here to significantly buff browser capabilities, and give you more ways to interact with it! 

We’re talking about Image Generation capabilities, Voice Output, and even Image Understanding. We’re also bringing improvements to the chat itself with an option to summarize entire conversations. And if you’re the kind of person who likes to do deep-dives, Aria now provides links to the sources of information regarding the conversation’s topic.

We want to bring you, GX users, the latest AI Feature Drops that we’ve been preparing in Opera Developer – our testing ground for new features.

Aria levels up: Image Generation

With the introduction of Image Generation, you can have Aria create an image by prompting it in the chat. It’s easy-peasy – just use your imagination! You can create images that match the themes you want, for example a fantasy character, or a cyberpunk-looking car. For example, let’s have Aria generate an epic image for a fantasy-themed world:

You can also alter the image further via text prompts in the same chat – no need to create a new one! So, let’s say you want to add a dragon into the picture to make it look even more like a scene from a fantasy world – not Final Fantasy though, more like LOTR vibes:

Nice we’ve got a dragon! But wait a moment, this isn’t what we meant when we said “add a dragon to the picture.” Well, sometimes LLMs can take your instructions a bit too… literally. So what can you do to get the actual image you want instead of a literal picture of a dragon? Well, simply click on the “regenerate” button that appears in the top right corner of the image when you hover over it.

(The regenerate button is the one inside the red circle, just FYI.)

So, after clicking that button, Aria will regenerate the picture based on the same prompt. Now we have a much better image that matches the initial prompt. You can keep clicking on the regenerate button to have Aria come up with a different version of the same image, giving you more options to choose from.

Now you have an inspiring image for your character-building process to share with your friends through Discord, or to set as your new GX wallpaper. But please, don’t flood Aria with a billion Anime image generation requests – there’s a limit of 30 images per user per day, so use them carefully.

This new feature unlocks a whole new level of interaction with Aria. Whether you want unique wallpapers or inspiration for your world-building process, Aria will generate whatever you can envision using the Imagen2 model by Google.

New skill unlocked: Aria voice output

You can now get Aria to read your answers out loud, giving you yet another way to get information from the browser AI. In this case, Aria’s text-to-speech capabilities can prove useful for when you’re multitasking, or for accessibility. That means that Aria can do a little bit of back-seat gaming for you – if you want, of course.

Let’s say you’re stuck in a boss fight with, for example, Sekiro. You can ask Aria for help devising strategies to beat that old grumpy owl, and have the answers read out to you while you are still in-game prepping for the fight! 

To listen to Aria, you need to open a chat through the sidebar icon and start a conversation. Then you’ll need to click on the speaker button that appears on the top right corner of Aria’s response when you hover over it (yes, the one inside the red circle).

Aria will try to read your answers in the relevant language of the chat, but bear in mind that it doesn’t support elvish just yet. This feature is currently using the Basic version of Google’s WaveNet model. So get Aria talking today, and replace your toxic teammates with a helpful assistant! 

Aria’s cyberware has been upgraded with “Image Understanding”

With this upgrade we’re giving Aria some modifications that allow it to understand images, and provide answers based on them.

So, how can you use this to your advantage? The first step is to click the “+” button to the left of the chat box, and then click on “upload image” – just like in the following picture: 

Now, let’s say you’re looking for a headset and saw one in a picture, but you can’t find a reference to the specific model. So you upload the picture to Aria, ask what it is and, just like Rohan, Aria will answer:

But Aria can do more than just assist your online shopping – it can help you solve math problems, or even some basic programming ones. You can check out this blog post about image understanding to find out more.

Quality of Life Improvements: Chat Summary and Links to Sources

This update also includes a feature that lets you summarize your entire chat with Aria, allowing you to recap the most important bits and pieces. It’s particularly useful when you’ve had a long chat and asked many questions. For example, it can help you go back and see what Aria had to say about how to beat that boss that’s been giving you a headache.

To use this feature you’ll need to click on the “+” button to the left of the chat box, and then click on “Summarize chat” option (image below for reference).

The other chat-related feature in this patch gives you links to sources when you’re chatting with Aria. This might seem like a small change, but it’s essentially a huge buff that allows you to access even more information when using Aria. 

This feature activates automatically whenever you ask Aria anything that requires information from the web. As an up-to-date AI assistant, it will point you in the right direction if you want to head directly to the sauce… I mean, source. 

For example, let’s go back to our Sekiro query:

As you can see, Aria is providing the links to sources of information that could help answer your questions. In this case, it’s pointing to a Reddit conversation about how to beat the Owl – surprisingly, that Reddit thread was actually helpful! Additionally, it’s also pointing to a YouTube guide, an article which made us block a million cookie settings (thank you GX tracker blocker), and even the Sekiro Wiki. 

These quality of life improvements make Aria a much better assistant for any gamer, and help you stay on top of your game – literally. 

Try the latest Aria features today

Download Opera GX and try out the new features that are coming to Aria with this patch.

This content originally appeared on Opera News and was authored by Santiago Benavides García