NTSB blocks docket access after AI recreates dead pilots’ voices from cockpit data
NTSB pulls back docket access after AI voice recreations spread online
The National Transportation Safety Board temporarily removed public access to its docket system after discovering that AI had been used to recreate the voices of pilots killed in a UPS plane crash last year, and that the audio was circulating online.
The agency said Friday it restored access to the docket system but kept 42 investigations closed while it reviews the issue, including the case involving UPS Flight 2976 in Louisville, Kentucky.
The incident highlights a growing problem for public records in the age of generative AI. The NTSB is barred by federal law from placing cockpit audio recordings in its docket system, which has long been open to the public and contains extensive material from crash investigations. But in this case, the docket for the UPS flight included a spectrogram file from the voice recorder.
A spectrogram converts sound into an image by mapping frequencies and other audio information into visual form. Scott Manley, a popular YouTuber who covers physics, astronomy and video games, pointed on X that the data embedded in the image could potentially be used to reconstruct audio.
That is what apparently happened. According to the NTSB, people took the spectrogram and the publicly available transcript and used AI tools, including Codex, to create approximations of the cockpit voice recorder audio from the crash. The recreated voices then spread on the internet.
The agency’s move to lock down the docket system underscores how even data that is not explicitly audio can be transformed into something much closer to the original recording when paired with modern AI tools. For investigators and regulators, it raises new questions about what should remain public, and what can be inferred from documents that were never meant to contain the sounds themselves.
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