NTSB Suspends Access After AI Audio Leak

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recently made the decision to temporarily suspend access to its records system. This measure was taken after it was discovered that voices of pilots who died in a UPS plane crash last year had been recreated and shared online using artificial intelligence.

According to federal legislation, the NTSB is not allowed to include cockpit audio recordings in its records system, which is generally accessible to the public and contains a vast amount of data on investigations. However, the file regarding the UPS flight accident contained a spectrogram of the voice recorder. A spectrogram is a visual representation of sound frequencies, obtained through a mathematical process that converts sound signals into images.

Scott Manley, a YouTuber known for his videos that blend physics, astronomy, and video games, pointed out on the platform X that it is technically possible to reconstruct audio from the data contained in these spectrograms. This possibility was exploited, and individuals used the spectrogram, along with the public transcript, to recreate approximations of the audio from the cockpit voice recorder of UPS flight 2976 in Louisville, Kentucky. AI tools such as Codex were used for this purpose, as indicated by social media posts.

Although the NTSB has restored public access to its records system, it has decided to keep 42 closed investigations pending review, including the one concerning flight 2976.