The US is pushing to stop internet users from reproducing the voices of dead pilots

Voices of the pilots in the last seconds of the deadly cargo plane crash have been recreated by online experts using AI software and tools. The proliferation of reconstructed audio recordings has prompted a US government agency to freeze access to public access to traffic accident reports because state law prohibits investigators from publicly releasing audio from cockpit voice recorders.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) often shares fact-finding reports and evidence gathered in the investigation of airline accidents and other public transportation incidents. But on May 21, the NTSB he announced that online docket process which contained such information was “temporarily unavailable” while looking at publicly available tools that helped people recreate the audio tapes of the plane crash.

“The NTSB is aware that advances in image recognition and statistical methods have made it possible to estimate cockpit voice recorders from audio released as part of NTSB investigations, including last year’s investigation of UPS Flight 2976 in Louisville, Kentucky,” according to the NTSB. NTSB photo. “NTSB will not release cockpit voice recorder.”

UPS flight 2976 was a United Parcel Service MD-11F cargo plane it fell as soon as he took off from Louisville, Kentucky, on November 4, 2025, following a system failure that resulted in an engine failure as the aircraft left the ground. The three pilots on board, including the co-pilot, were killed. Someone 12 people in the world was killed, and 23 people were injured.

The US Congress enacted a federal law in 1990 prohibiting the NTSB from publicly sharing any portion of the cockpit voice or video recorder to protect the pilots’ privacy. The order followed a push by pilots on television that aired cockpit conversations about August 1988 crash of Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.