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3h ago

NTSB Restores Public Docket as It Reviews AI Recreated Cockpit Audio

The agency is auditing released spectrograms and keeping dozens of investigations closed to protect crew privacy and follow federal law.

Fire and smoke mark where a UPS cargo plane crashed near Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport on November 04, 2025 in Louisville, Kentucky. The fully fueled plane crashed shortly after takeoff with a shelter-in-place order issued for within 5 miles of the airport. (Photo by Stephen Cohen/Getty Images)
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The NTSB says individuals have used AI to animate the crash transcripts. A UPS MD-11F [Credit: Shutterstock/Austin Deppe]
Still image from a video showing a cargo plane taking off while fire engulfs a wing and the left engine having detached. The crash of UPS flight 2976 killed three pilots aboard the aircraft and killed a dozen more people on the ground, with 23 people being injured.

Overview

  • The NTSB posted transcripts and a spectrogram for the UPS Flight 2976 probe during May 19–20 investigative hearings, making those files available in its public docket.
  • On May 21–22 internet users applied image‑recognition and AI tools to the spectrogram and posted approximations of the cockpit voice recorder audio online.
  • The agency temporarily took its docket system offline after discovering the reconstructions and later restored general access while leaving 42 investigations, including Flight 2976, closed for further review.
  • The NTSB has urged platforms such as X and Reddit to remove the recreated audio and reiterated that federal law bars public release of actual cockpit voice recordings to protect crew privacy.
  • The episode exposes a new safety‑transparency tradeoff: investigators must balance open publication of evidence used by safety researchers with the risk that released spectrograms can be reverse‑engineered by widely available AI tools.