US scrambles to stop Internet users re-creating dead pilots’ voices
Ars Technica • • business
Key Points:
- Internet users have used AI and software tools to reconstruct pilots’ voices from the last seconds of the UPS flight 2976 cargo plane crash by converting publicly released spectrogram images back into audio.
- The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) suspended public access to its civil transportation accident database after these audio recreations surfaced, citing federal law that prohibits releasing cockpit voice recordings to protect crew privacy.
- UPS flight 2976 crashed in November 2025 after an engine detached shortly after takeoff from Louisville, Kentucky, killing all three pilots aboard and 12 people on the ground, with 23 others injured.
- The NTSB had released written transcripts and a spectrogram image of the cockpit audio during a May 2026 hearing, which enabled the AI reconstructions using algorithms like Griffin-Lim and AI coding tools such as OpenAI’s Codex.
- The agency is reviewing its publicly available materials to prevent future unauthorized reconstructions and plans to restore access to its docket system once solutions are implemented, emphasizing the importance of protecting pilot privacy during investigations.