Web browser Opera is planning to incorporate ChatGPT

BEIJING — Niche web browser Opera is planning to integrate ChatGPT into its products, Opera's parent Kunlun Tech announced Wednesday.

No details were shared on timing, or whether the functions would be available across all of Opera's products — which include desktop and mobile browsers for iOS and Android.

The news comes as Microsoft and Google this week announced plans to incorporate artificial intelligence chatbot technology with their own search engines. ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, has surged in popularity since its release in late November.

Google's Chrome browser has the largest market share worldwide at 65.4%, while Microsoft's Edge browser has a 4.5% share, according to Statcounter data for January.

Opera ranks sixth in the worldwide browser market with a 2.4% share, the data showed.

Norway-based Opera, which also operates a browser specialized for gaming, had an average of 321 million monthly active users as of the third quarter. The company said its gaming browser business helped boost revenue in the third quarter, for 28% growth year-on-year to $85.3 million.

Parent company Kunlun Tech is based in Beijing and listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange. In December, the company announced its work in an array of artificial intelligence-generated content, such as music and images, would be made open source.

Kunlun Tech's shares are up more than 40% for the year so far. Nasdaq-listed Opera's shares are up just over 10% for that time period.

Many companies have rushed to announce their work in ChatGPT-like products.

Chinese tech giant Baidu said this week it will likely complete internal testing of its own artificial intelligence chatbot in March, before making the product publicly available.

Alibaba is also working on a ChatGPT rival, but did not disclose timing.

It is not clear how these new AI features would compare with ChatGPT's abilities.

When it comes to mobile search, Google has a whopping 96.5% share of the global market, while Baidu is second with a 0.7% share, according to Statcounter.