Facebook on Monday said stepping up the use of artificial intelligence to identify members of the leading social network who may be thinking of suicide.

Software will look for clues in posts or even in videos being streamed at Facebook Live, then fire off reports to human reviewers and speed up alerts to responders trained to help, according to the social network.

"This approach uses pattern recognition technology to help identify posts and live streams as likely to be expressing thoughts of suicide," Facebook vice president of product management Guy Rosen said in a blog post.

Signs watched for were said to include texts by people or comments to them, such as someone asking if they are troubled.