US Agency Restricts Access to Crash Data
- AI tools enable voice reconstruction of deceased pilots
- NTSB halts public access to accident audio records
- Federal law prohibits the release of cockpit conversations
Recent developments reveal that individuals have successfully reconstructed the voices of pilots from a tragic cargo plane crash using AI and other software tools. This alarming trend has led the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to suspend public access to its database of civil transportation accident information, as federal regulations prevent the sharing of cockpit voice recordings.
On May 21, the NTSB announced that its online docket system was temporarily down while it assessed the allure of materials that facilitated these audio recreations. In a statement, the NTSB emphasized that it does not disclose cockpit voice recordings, acknowledging the role of advanced techniques in generating these approximations from investigative imagery.