Trustworthiness analysis of 10 Australia-based AI companies

Cybernews recently released the AI Trustworthiness Ranking 2026, where we ranked 500 leading AI companies based on four pillars: public perception, privacy, security, and transparency.

Out of the 500 analyzed companies, 10 were based in Australia.

The average Trustworthiness score of these 10 Australian companies is 68–higher than that of any other region or country analyzed. However, the small sample size is a significant limitation, so these figures should not be considered representative of the Australian AI market as a whole.

Design giant Canva ranks first

Canva, a popular design tool valued at around $60 billion, takes first place with a Trustworthiness score of 88 among the 10 Australian AI firms examined.

Quite a few points behind, with a score of 77, is Lyrebird Health–an AI tool that listens to doctor consultations and generates notes.

Tactiq, an AI note-taker for online meetings, takes 3rd place with a score of 75.

Three companies share the same score of 72: ScreenApp (another AI note-taker), Heidi Health(used by clinicians across various workflows), and Leonardo.Ai (an AI image generator). These companies rank 4th, 5th, and 6th.

In 7th place with a score of 61 is Vmake AI (now rebranded as Vmake Labs), which helps creators edit short-form social media content.

Smartlead, an AI platform for cold email outreach, and Zawa AI, a platform that helps businesses generate brand-related content, take 8th and 9th place, both scoring 56.

NightCafe Creator is last on the list with a score of 54. It's one of the first AI art generators, predating even Midjourney.

To see detailed information on why each company scored the way it did, explore the AI Trustworthiness Ranking 2026.

Australia receives the highest security and privacy scores

Compared with other countries and regions, these 10 Australian businesses performed particularly well in privacy and security.

Australia’s average security score of 40 is ahead of the US (39), Germany (38), the UK (30), Canada (28), Europe (25), and far ahead of Asia (16).

For security, we looked at whether or not the company had an active bug bounty program, a security or trust page, and ISO/IEC 27001 or SOC 2 Type II certifications.

Australia’s privacy score of 74 is also strong, putting it ahead of the US (72), Europe (69), Canada (68), the UK and Germany (67 each), and Asia (67).

For privacy, Cybernews examined company privacy policies to assess how clearly they explain how they collect, share, use, and retain user data.

Australia’s and the UK share the highest public perception score of 74. Public perception scores are based on user reviews of each company on Trustpilot and G2.

Transparency is Australia’s only pillar where it scores below peers. With a score of 87, Australia trails Germany (98), Canada (92), Asia (91), and the US, UK, and Europe (90 each).

For transparency, we looked at whether a company provides its physical address, discloses its legal entity name, and has a working, non-automated contact channel.

Some privacy issues remain

Even though Australia’s privacy scores are ahead of those of other countries and regions, there are a few concerning privacy issues:

We found that 7 out of 10 Australian AI companies may be training their models on user data without clearly disclosing this: six companies did not mention anything in their privacy policies about training their AI models on user data, while one company used vague language.

Moreover, 6 out of 10 companies did not clearly disclose how long they retain user data. Five companies mentioned data retention only in vague terms, while one did not specify anything about data retention in its privacy policy.

Explore the full AI Trustworthiness Ranking and individual company scores here: https://cybernews.com/ai-knowledge-base/ai-trustworthiness-ranking-2026/