US scrambles to stop Internet users re-creating dead pilots’ voices
Summary
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) stopped public access to its online accident investigation database after people used AI tools to recreate voices from a fatal cargo plane crash’s cockpit voice recordings. Federal law bans releasing cockpit audio publicly to protect pilots’ privacy, so the NTSB is reviewing how it shares investigation materials to prevent this from happening again.Key Facts
- The NTSB usually shares reports and evidence from plane crash investigations but does not release cockpit audio recordings.
- On May 21, 2026, the NTSB temporarily closed its online system after people used a sound image (spectrogram) from an investigation to reconstruct cockpit audio with AI.
- The incident involves UPS flight 2976, which crashed in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 4, 2025, killing three pilots and 12 people on the ground.
- A 1990 federal law forbids the NTSB from publicly sharing cockpit voice or video recordings to protect crew privacy.
- The NTSB carefully restricts access to cockpit audio during investigations, requiring nondisclosure agreements and destroying notes afterward.
- The spectrogram showing the last 30 seconds of cockpit audio was publicly shared as a PDF but allowed internet users to recreate the pilots’ voices.
- AI methods like the Griffin-Lim algorithm were used by internet users to recreate these audio clips.
- The recreated audio clips and spectrogram spread on social media platforms such as X and Reddit.
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