US scrambles to stop Internet users re-creating dead pilots’ voices - Ars Technica
Internet users reconstructed the voices of deceased pilots from a fatal UPS cargo plane crash using AI, prompting the NTSB to restrict access to its database.
- Incident date
- Nov 2025
- Target
- Pilots of UPS Flight 2976
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) temporarily suspended public access to its database of civil transportation accidents after individuals used AI to recreate the voices of pilots from the UPS Flight 2976 crash. This incident, which involved a fatal cargo plane crash, raised privacy concerns and prompted the NTSB to review its data release policies.
What happened
Following the crash of UPS Flight 2976 on November 4, 2025, the NTSB released a written transcript and a spectrogram of the cockpit audio recordings. Internet users then utilized AI models and software, such as the Griffin-Lim algorithm, to reconstruct audio of the pilots' voices from the spectrogram. The reconstructed audio was shared on social media platforms, leading the NTSB to restrict public access to its database due to federal law prohibiting the public release of cockpit audio.