Facebook is testing AI tools to help prevent suicide

Facebook is trialling new tools to help with suicide prevention efforts. One approach will use artificial intelligence to identify concerning posts and make it easier for other people to report them. Facebook says it will use pattern recognition algorithms to spot posts that could indicate someone is suicidal and help their friends to flag this content by making the option to report posts about "suicide and self injury" more prominent for those that are considered potentially concerning. The algorithms are trained on posts that have previously been reported. It will also use pattern recognition to flag posts "very likely to include thoughts of suicide" so that its community operations team can take action even if the post is not reported.