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NTSB Temporarily Restricts Docket Access After AI Reconstruction of Cockpit Audio
The National Transportation Safety Board blocked public access to its docket system after discovering that cockpit voice data from a 2025 UPS plane crash had been reconstructed using AI. The agency restored access on Friday but kept 42 investigations closed for review.
May 22, 7:03 PM·1m read1 source
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The National Transportation Safety Board temporarily removed public access to its docket system after discovering that cockpit voice data from a UPS plane crash had been reconstructed using AI tools. Federal law bars the NTSB from releasing actual cockpit audio recordings.
The docket for UPS Flight 2976 contained only a spectrogram image that converts sound frequencies into visual data. Scott Manley posted on X that the image file contained enough encoded information to allow reconstruction when paired with the public transcript.
Users applied AI tools including Codex to generate audio approximations of the pilots' voices.
The NTSB restored access to the docket system on Friday.
It kept 42 investigations closed while it reviews whether similar spectrogram files could be used to recreate restricted audio. The closed cases include the docket for Flight 2976, which crashed in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2025. The agency stated that the spectrogram had been included because it was not an actual audio recording.
