One of the biggest advantages of Aria over ChatGPT — at least, for now — is that it’s already connected to the web and can pull up-to-date results and current information. ChatGPT, on the other hand, will only surface information as recent as 2021, because that’s how far back its date range goes. Plus, it doesn’t offer the web browsing facility to all users, just yet.
It was in May that Microsoft announced Bing as the default search engine service for ChatGPT. The web browsing facility itself is enabled through a dedicated plug-in that is currently available only to ChatGPT Plus users, a subscription service that costs $20 per month for personal use. It is yet to be enabled for free users, but there are plans to do so down the road.
Aria, on the other hand, is being marketed as an internet-connected “free service with up-to-date information” that allows users to pull fresh results from the web. In addition to web browsing, Aria is also capable of the usual generative AI capabilities such as helping write code, find product listings, and provide summarized answers. Plus, Aria has been natively trained on all of Opera’s support documents, which means it can pull up the relevant help page for all browser-related queries.