Agentic AI — getting AI to perform tasks rather than just
create content from prompts — is coming to the Opera browser.
On Monday, the Norwegian company announced that its agent,
Browser Operator, works inside Opera and will perform tasks on the web for
users.
“Having an AI agent in the browser brings the advantage of
letting you outsource the most monotonous tasks to the browser while you focus
on the things that really matter to you,” Opera Senior Vice President Jan
Standal told TechNewsWorld.
In a blog posting on its website, Opera explained that
Browser Operator understands written instructions in natural language using the
browser client’s local resources. Opera’s AI Composer Engine processes that
information to complete tasks in the browser.
Browser Operator will pause and ask a user to take action
whenever it needs them to fill in a form, confirm an order, or perform some
other sensitive task. In this entire process, the user is in control and can
take over at any moment from Browser Operator. They can also review all the
steps the agent took to perform a requested task.
“Many of the tasks that people perform in their internet
browsers are repetitive, like scouring online retailers for the best prices or
checking the same feeds for notable activity,” explained Max Vermier, senior
director of AI strategy at Abbyy, a
global intelligent automation company.
“Instead of spending countless minutes or even hours of your
own time on these monotonous searches for information, an AI agent can
autonomously gather it and present you with its findings in a fraction of the
time,” he told TechNewsWorld. “AI agents can be your personal productivity
assistant, taking on your busy work and allowing you to make consequential
decisions.”
“It’s like having a personal assistant who automatically
helps with all tasks online — from planning and booking a vacation to keeping
track of property tax deadlines,” added Ambuj Kumar, founder of Simbian, a provider of
autonomous AI agents for cybersecurity in Mountain View, Calif.
“Not only is the idea very powerful and completely feasible
today,” he told TechNewsWorld, “but this could be one of those technologies
that helps everyone.”
First Native AI Agent
Although other browsers have incorporated AI features, Opera is the first to make an AI agent native to a browser.
“The concept is not new, but the way that Opera is
implementing it is new,” said Sandi Besen, an applied AI researcher at IBM
and Neudesic, a
global professional services company.
Other companies capture screenshots and screen videos and
send them to their AI models in the cloud to follow through on actions. Browser
Operator interacts with the elements on a web page through Document Object Model
technology.
“Basically, the DOM is automatically created by the browser,”
Besen told TechNewsWorld. “It’s essentially an in-memory representation of the
web page’s structure.”
One advantage of using DOM, she noted, is it creates a more
seamless user experience because it’s more native to the browser environment.
It improves the agent’s performance, too. “It doesn’t need to
take a screenshot, send that to the model, wait for what the model wants to do
next, and then execute a tool to make something happen in the browser,” she
explained. “Instead, it can just access the web page data.”
“It also enhances privacy because everything is done locally
on the device,” she continued. “It’s not being run or sent to a server or a
cloud-based hosted model somewhere. So the information’s being kept locally,
which is better for privacy concerns, especially if you’re navigating things
like login information or passwords.”
Komninos Chatzipapas, founder of HeraHaven AI, developer of
an AI-based virtual companion app, in St. Petersburg, Fla. added that a
significant advantage of doing agentic AI natively and locally on the browser
is, unlike the cloud approach of OpenAI’s Operator, users will already be
logged into all their accounts. “You will be using your local IP, so you won’t
need to solve captchas every other minute like on Operator,” he told
TechNewsWorld.
Can Opera’s AI Shift Market Share?
Opera’s innovative approach could give it some leverage in a
market where it has been only a niche player. “This is one potential advantage
for Opera,” said Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, an advisory
services firm in Bend, Ore.
“Others treat browsers as cost centers and thus don’t put
much development emphasis on them,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Opera, by focusing
advancement on their browser, could move around the more established players if
users find this feature compelling, and they may.”
He argued that Browser Operator could have an impact on
Opera’s market share. “It depends on how well Opera can get the word out, get
influencers to use the feature, and then get to a critical mass of regular
users to drive an adoption wave,” he said.
In theory, Opera’s Browser Operator AI could enhance its
market position by differentiating it from competitors, noted Mark N. Vena,
president and principal analyst with SmartTech Research in
Las Vegas.
“By integrating agentic AI for automation, search efficiency,
and task execution, Opera may attract tech-savvy users,” he told TechNewsWorld.
“However, market impact depends on execution, adoption rates, and competition
from big-hitter AI-enhanced browsers like Edge, Copilot, and Chrome, with
Gemini.”
Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research,
a consumer technology advisory firm in New York City, pointed out that AI
innovation hasn’t been successful in the past in disgorging market share from
entrenched players.
“Microsoft’s launching of an AI-infused Bing brought more
attention to that search engine than we had seen in a long time, but it hasn’t
meaningfully moved the needle for Bing in terms of search engine share,” he
told TechNewsWorld.
“And there’s less of a barrier going to Bing instead of
Google, as opposed to downloading a whole new browser,” he said. “So, Browser
Operator is probably not going to do much in terms of Opera’s relative
standing.”
AI Agents Everywhere
Browser Operator is just the first of what will be a
proliferation of AI agents, predicted David Johnston, a contributor to Morpheus, an
open-source platform for launching smart agents. “All browsers will include
them, as the productivity increases are amazing,” he told TechNewsWorld.
“AI is in discovery mode, and people are experimenting with
where to best access its powers,” he said. “From websites to dedicated apps,
smart agents will be everywhere.”
“Web browsers are there to make you more powerful while
you’re online, browsing the web and to give you the tools to use your time more
effectively,” Opera’s Standal added. “Browser Operator showcases that we have
the capability of making a useful and smart tool within the browser — which
aligns with the overall objective of a web browser of being useful.”
“With this feature preview we’re showing a proof of concept
of where AI could take us when we use AI to leverage our work building a web
browser — and this applies to every industry,” he said.
