US agency halts data access over AI voice recreations

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has temporarily suspended public access to its accident investigation database. This action follows the unauthorized reconstruction of deceased pilots' voices from a fatal UPS cargo plane crash using AI tools. Internet users recreated the cockpit audio from spectrograms released by the NTSB, circumventing a federal law that prohibits the public release of cockpit voice recordings to protect air crew privacy. The NTSB is reviewing its public dissemination practices to prevent similar incidents. This situation highlights the growing challenge of deepfake technology and its potential misuse, even in sensitive contexts like accident investigations.