Opera becomes the first major browser with built-in access to local AI models
press.opera.com
press.opera.com
Why does my browser have a PDF reader and print manager built in?
That would be awfully convenient. You'd never lose them or need to deal with another native application. Just open any web page that echoes all HTTP headers and then check your account balance.
Or maybe having a separation of concerns for different applications in a general purpose computer is worth the friction.
Upon further research, I have found that I misread the word "unnecessarily".
Personally I prefer to use a separate, dedicated service to run my language models, and I bounce between a few clients for various things. One of them is a (local) web interface (open-webui).
When you use an LLM, you provide it context. Where do you usually get that context from? Some service, JIRA, whatever, in your browser.
A browser is one thing that users will go out of their way to replace, making it a pretty attractive vehicle for stuff like this.
GenAI on the browser skips the intermediaries and probably loads faster than all the JS needed for 1200 analytics "partners" and reinventing the wheel badly by making it load text on the fly based on your scroll position rather than letting the browser handle it because someone just assumed a few thousand lines must be slow and never stopped to try it.
Plus it being local means it might even work when you have no signal.
Opera has been bundling stuff like that, even a BitTorrent client, even when they were still a Norwegian owned company.
No longer the case since they switched to Blink. Nonetheless, Opera still comes with more built-in functionality than other browsers, such as ad blocker, in-browser VPN, and builtin ads occasionally.
Opera has historically been a junk drawer of technology. A BitTorrent client. A mail app. A chat app. A web server. There have been innumerable features which were often unnecessary or puzzling. It does not surprise me at all to hear that they're adding local LLM support.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/translate/
Maybe they mean LLM, instead of AI (not sure if Firefox translate models are LLM ir not)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_machine_translation
See also:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/local-translation-add-on...
Last time I checked, the browser's purpose was to serve web applications.
But I am really frustrated by LLM's being installed into nearly everything with no real value. We still have fundemtal issues with the tech like it hallucinating and giving straight up bad information.
The idea that it is being shoved into things, being normalized, is going to bite us real hard and I frankly hope soon.
Also, like someone else said. Browsers are getting way too complicated.
There is no stopping it, there is only people who stop trusting most technology
Imagine what (test) automation extensions like Selenium IDE or Ui.vision could do then. Or translation extensions. Or.... so many cool options.
This seems like a good idea though, too bad they are untrustable at this point.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser) 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/dealbook/china-o...
Edit: they're all chromium anyways.
"The most controversial sections of the law include Article 7 which potentially compels businesses registered or operating in the People's Republic of China to hand over information to Chinese intelligence agencies such as the MSS and to conceal the fact that they do so." [1]
The US even went so far to demand that US intelligence has domain over data no matter where it's stored, and supremacy when it conflicts with local laws https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/29/us-court-....
If you're in the US you could make an argument that it's fine because it's your own government -- which I don't really buy because China can't arrest you over here -- but to everyone else US tech and business should be just as toxic as China if that's the real motivation.
> which I don't really buy because China can't arrest you over here
Not entirely true: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/19/china-police-state-...
Look up the CLOUD act passed in response to that.
I use Vivaldi every day, and like it very much.
We don't? Maybe we should.
Someone will have to pay the bill and the general attitude when it comes to monetising browsers are adtech partnerships, not subscriptions.
So at this point, frankly, "running a local LLM" is a pretty minor feature compared to the entire feature set of an average browser.
- built-in support of USB webcam (for video conferencing)
- WebGL for video games
- XMLHTTPRequest to support active pages (email, calendar, etc)
- <canvas> for arbitrary 2D image (image editors, etc)
My point is that this stuff was not necessary either to simply "browse the internet". Browsers constantly evolve to provide more and more complex features beyond browsing.
The local LLM feels like it could/should be its own app, separate from the browser. If the point of the local AI is not keep the users data local, it seems confusing to have it in the browser at all.
And 'browsing the internet' sounds much different than 'doing nearly everything'
I've been meaning to move to Vivaldi, and this AI crap was the push I needed.
You can't even highlight anything in Opera without getting 3 different AI tool suggestions. It's just too much.
Other than the recent(ish) UI redesign, though, Opera has solid UX. I will miss the interface, but Brave has most of what I want.
Brave browser installs a VPN service on Windows whether you want it or not. [1]
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/20/23925192/brave-browser-v...
20 years ago, Opera had an email client built into the browser, for example.
I used Opera for quite a while back then, but eventually it became too much bloat, and I ended up switching to Phoenix (now Firefox) when it came out. I remember having a really hard time losing the mouse actions from Opera after the switch.
People are using AI to create incredible amounts of SEO content, to the point where just using Google to find something is becoming increasingly useless. If, on the other hand, you had an AI agent that automatically filtered out all of the noise, you could still find the real information you need. What would be even better is if the agent could learn about the things you find interesting, and the things you'd rather avoid.
Now the question is: do you want to have control over such agents and the data they need, or would you rather let some centralized entity manage them for you?
I say this to make it clear that the "now" in your comment ignores past and present browsers across all platforms.
"Browsers are for browsing internet. So many of them are now turning into bloatware."
This person is implying internet as only the web, when the reality is, suites would access more than just the web. To suggest they are "for browsing [web]" only is 100% wrong, and history shows them.
So, normally your comment would be appropriate, but it ignores context and the discussion at hand. Context is important, and you shouldn't ignore it.
Running local LLMs might be a heavy order currently to get the job done, but in the near future I don't see a reason why it couldn't be done and it would definitely be quite helpful to people who have either many tabs open or a lot of bookmarks they want to organise.
Ironically, Opera's extension shop is dead and no one reviews new submissions, but for anyone else who is interested in learning more about how we use LLMs to improve the browsing experience or even give the product a shot, here is a link:
But LLMs are needed if you want the product to have a deeper understanding of everything that you are reading and really organise it into groups. You might be reading about architecture across three devices, multiple browsers, from a bunch of different websites. This gives you the opportunity to reunite them and really dive into that topic when you need to.
LLMs are also used to create summaries of each page. So, if some content takes 30 minutes to read, you can have them extract all the interesting information for you in bullet points and based on that you can decide if its worth spending the 30 minutes or if you would rather just close that tab.
So, in short, it's about capabilities. You can have just simple statistical models and regex rules filtering similar websites into predefined categories, or you can have a tool that truly organises your reading and shortens it for you. But for the latter, you need complex models handling a lot of context.