AI is being used to resurrect the voices of dead pilots

techcrunch.com May 23, 2026

AI is being used to resurrect the voices of dead pilots

Curated by Shubham · TechCapsules · May 23, 2026

AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication

The National Transportation Safety Board temporarily removed access to its docket system after discovering AI-recreated voices of dead pilots from a UPS plane crash were circulating online. The voices were recreated from a spectrogram file of the voice recorder, which was included in the accident docket. People used AI tools like Codex and the publicly available transcript to create approximations of the cockpit voice recorder audio. The NTSB restored public access to the docket system but kept 42 investigations closed, including the one related to the UPS flight. The agency is prohibited from including cockpit audio recordings in its docket system by federal law.

💡 Why It Matters

· The incident raises concerns about the potential misuse of AI in reconstructing sensitive information.
· It highlights the need for stricter controls over the use of AI tools in handling sensitive data.

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