The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has temporarily taken its public docket system offline after learning that third parties may have used AI and image-recognition tools to reconstruct approximations of cockpit voice recorder audio from materials in its accident files.
The move follows concern over public release of spectrogram imagery included in the agency’s investigative records, which can be used to infer cockpit audio even though federal law bars the NTSB from publishing the recordings themselves. The agency said it is examining the scope of the issue and looking for solutions.
The episode is linked in part to the investigation of UPS Flight 2976, a UPS MD-11F that crashed near Louisville, Kentucky, on Nov. 4, 2025, shortly after takeoff. The accident killed the three crew members aboard and 11 people on the ground, and injured 23 others on the ground.
The NTSB said the docket system will remain temporarily unavailable while it assesses which cases may be affected and how to preserve public transparency without exposing protected cockpit audio.