AirBrush

Is AirBrush safe?

AirBrush is safe from strangers and scams, but it asks for more trust with your face than its App Store label suggests. The app is run by Pixocial, a Singapore company in which China's Meitu held 80.62% after a 2023 funding round, and its privacy policy is built from the same template as BeautyPlus. It lets data be stored in mainland China, lets US face data be used for research, and takes a perpetual licence to what you upload. We found no breach and no fine. We score it 52/100, above BeautyPlus (48) and Meitu (50), mainly because India has not blocked it, and below Facetune (58).

Who is behind AirBrush

AirBrush has been on the App Store since 2015. It has more than 200,000 ratings in the US App Store and over 100 million installs on Google Play. It sat at number 34 in the US Photo & Video chart when we checked. Its publisher, Pixocial Technology (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., started life as Meitu's overseas arm. A filing Meitu made with the Hong Kong exchange on 1 December 2023 shows that, after outside investors bought in, Meitu still controlled 80.62% of Pixocial on a fully diluted basis, and Pixocial remained its subsidiary.

The policy gives a Hong Kong office address for privacy requests. Pixocial also publishes AirVid, an AI video enhancer, whose Google Play listing links to the same privacy policy; in October 2026 it had 594 ratings in the US App Store and more than 1 million Google Play installs.

What the policy says about your face and phone

The App Store label is modest. It says identifiers are used to track you across other companies' apps, and that coarse location, device ID, product interaction and diagnostics are collected but not linked to you. Google Play's form adds payment info, app activity, files and optional account details.

The privacy policy, last modified on 28 May 2026, goes further. On mobile it collects advertising IDs, the SIM card identifiers IMSI and ICCID, the device identifier MEID and "a list of mobile applications installed on your device". With your consent, it may also read that app list to target ads. The name of the WiFi network you use and how long you stay on it are collected too. Under our rule that the broader disclosure counts, privacy sits at 40.

On faces, the policy contradicts itself in the same way as Meitu's apps. The general section says facial mapping is used only for the feature, is never uploaded, and is discarded when the app closes. The US section says you agree that Pixocial "may use facial recognition technology to collect biometric information" from your photos to improve the service and "for our internal research purposes". Illinois users' biometric data is deleted within three years of their last use. We read the US clause as the one that applies to US users.

The data may travel. The cross-border clause names Singapore, Japan, South Korea, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, the US and the EU. For European users the policy lists Alibaba Cloud (Singapore), BytePlus, Oracle and Microsoft for cloud services, OpenAI for the ChatGPT-based features and AppLovin for ads.

Your photos and the AI tools

The terms, last modified on 5 August 2025, give Pixocial a "non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, transferable, worldwide, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense" to content you make available, including to promote AirBrush. A separate AI section covers prompts, voice and photos used in AI features such as Pro Headshots and Mood Swapper. Pixocial stores those to watch for abuse and may use them to improve its AI. The terms say the AI is based on Stable Diffusion and that outputs may be inappropriate.

Disputes go to the courts of Singapore. Interest-based ads can be switched off only by emailing Pixocial with "Airbrush" in the title; you still get generic ads.

Teenagers and the 16+ rating

AirBrush's core tools smooth skin, remove blemishes, reshape faces and whiten teeth. Those are the features that worry parents about beauty editors, because they normalise an edited face. Apple's US listing rates the app 16+, citing frequent mature or suggestive themes, user-generated content and advertising. The terms are looser: AirBrush is closed to under-13s (under-16s in some countries), and anyone up to 18 needs a guardian's permission. The privacy policy says Pixocial does not knowingly collect data from children under 16. A stricter store rating is not a gap that exposes children, but parents of 13- to 15-year-olds should know the policy and the store disagree.

How to use AirBrush more safely

1. Give the app access to selected photos only, not your whole library.
2. Tap "Ask App Not to Track" on an iPhone, and delete the advertising ID on Android.
3. Keep other people's faces, and children's, out of the AI headshot and style tools.
4. If you live in the US and use the app often, assume your face data can be kept for up to three years.
5. Pick a monthly or yearly plan over the $7.99 weekly one, and cancel in the store at least 24 hours before renewal.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (85) is AirBrush's strongest factor: we found no fine, order or block naming the app, though no regulator has examined it. Privacy (40) is the weakest, because of possible storage in China, research use of US face data and tracking that the store labels leave out. Security (50) reflects a clean breach record but vague encryption promises and no bug bounty. For a non-Chinese alternative, compare YouCam Makeup (53).