AI used to recreate voices of deceased pilots from crash data
Original: AI is being used to resurrect the voices of dead pilots
Why This Matters
Highlights new ethical concerns around AI's ability to recreate deceased voices from public data
The NTSB temporarily closed its public docket system after discovering AI tools were used to reconstruct voices of pilots killed in UPS Flight 2976 crash. People used spectrograms and transcripts with AI to create audio approximations.
The National Transportation Safety Board temporarily removed public access to its investigation docket system after discovering that AI was being used to recreate the voices of pilots who died in a UPS plane crash. The incident involved UPS Flight 2976 in Louisville, Kentucky. While federal law prohibits the NTSB from including actual cockpit audio recordings in public documents, the agency had included a spectrogram file - a visual representation of audio frequencies. YouTuber Scott Manley noted on X that audio could potentially be reconstructed from the spectrogram data. People then combined the spectrogram with publicly available transcripts and used AI tools like Codex to create approximations of the cockpit voice recordings. The NTSB restored public access on Friday but kept 42 investigations closed pending review, including Flight 2976.