NTSB suspends access to investigation docket after AI audio rebuild

The National Transportation Safety Board has temporarily suspended public access to its online database of investigation materials after discovering that individuals used artificial intelligence to reconstruct cockpit audio from a fatal plane crash. The agency took this step following the online circulation of AI-generated audio approximating the final moments of UPS Flight 2976.

The incident involves the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 4, 2025. The aircraft, an MD-11F, experienced an engine separation shortly after takeoff, resulting in the deaths of the three crew members and twelve people on the ground. Twenty-three others were injured.

As part of its ongoing investigation, the NTSB held a public hearing in May 2026. In keeping with standard procedure for transparency, the agency released a public docket containing thousands of pages of reports, video, a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder, and a spectrogram file. A spectrogram is a visual image representing sound frequencies, duration, and amplitude. Federal law explicitly prohibits the NTSB from publicly releasing actual cockpit voice recorder audio due to the sensitive nature of the...