Opera Neon Gets Sora 2, Nano Banana as Opera Air Gets a Mascot

It’s a big week over at Opera, with the Neon web browser picking up Sora 2 and Google “Nano Banana” support. But the bigger news, of course, is that the Opera Air mindfulness browser now has a mascot in the form of a cute animated cat.

Opera Neon: Sora

Opera Neon is Opera’s new agentic AI-powered web browser and it’s a nice leap forward based on my early tests. This past week, Opera added support for OpenAI’s Sora 2 text-to-video models, enabling customers to create and share videos directly in the browser.

“The new Opera Neon features the Opera AI engine, which is model agnostic, powered by the latest models from companies such as Google and OpenAI,” Opera explains. “Sora 2 is OpenAI’s newest video generation model, which launched last week to a wave of hype and acclaim.”

To create a video with Sora 2 in Neon, type the prompt in the browser’s start page (New tab) with @make active.

Opera Neon: Nano Banana

This week, Opera added support for Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash text-to-image model, more affectionately known as Nano Banana, to Neon as well. This allows customers to generate photorealistic images directly in the browser.

“Nano Banana is an image generation and editing model that allows you to quickly generate AI images,” Opera explains. “Its main benefits are that it maintains scene and character consistency as you generate, edit and re-edit images. Google’s Nano Banana has now become the default image generation model in Opera Neon, replacing Imagen 4.0 / Ultra models, which are still available for our users together with GPT Image 1.”

Nano Banana integration is now live for all Opera Neon users.

Opera Air: Cat

Opera Air is a lightweight and minimalist web browser that’s focused on mindfulness. Opera says the goal for this version of its browser is to help users manage stress, enhance focus, and maintain emotional clarity throughout the day. And it provides unique tools like Take a Break and Binaural Beats to help get users there.

Today, Opera announced that Air has a new mascot in the form of a playful gray and white cat that will sleep, stretch, and meditate throughout the day as a mindful companion while you browse the web.

“Always in the present, hyper aware of sensory experiences, masters of non-judgmental acceptance of the self – cats have much to teach us if only we’d watch and learn,” Opera says. “You’ll first spot the cat in the lower-right corner of your browser. You can observe it in different locations within Opera Air as you browse – sleeping, playing, practicing yoga, and more. Or, you might not see it at all: much like a real cat, Opera Air’s mindful cat will come and go as it pleases.”

And yes, you can of course hide the cat if it’s not your thing.