SAN FRANCISCO — Responding to complaints that not enough is being done to keep extremist content off social media platforms, Facebook said Thursday that it would begin using artificial intelligence to help remove inappropriate content.

Artificial intelligence will largely be used in conjunction with human moderators who review content on a case-by-case basis. But developers hope its use will be expanded over time, said Monika Bickert, the head of global policy management at Facebook.

One of the first applications for the technology is identifying content that clearly violates Facebook’s terms of use, such as photos and videos of beheadings or other gruesome images, and stopping users from uploading them to the site.

“Tragically, we have seen more terror attacks recently,” Ms. Bickert said. “As we see more attacks, we see more people asking what social media companies are doing to keep this content offline.”