A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has been arrested in California for allegedly possessing child pornography. Detectives say some of the images were created using artificial intelligence.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at the home of 49-year-old Darrin Bell on Wednesday, Jan. 15, after authorities received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Download the SAN app today to stay up-to-date with Unbiased. Straight Facts™.
Point phone camera here
Initially, the tip concerned someone uploading 18 files containing child sex abuse material. Investigators said they ultimately found 134 child pornography videos linked to the same account, which they believe was controlled by Bell.
Before Jan. 1, possession of computer-generated child sex abuse material was not illegal in California. However, state lawmakers passed a bill criminalizing AI-generated child pornography in September, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the legislation into law.
California State Sen. Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, co-author of the bill, said: “Some people might say, ‘Well, there’s no victim,’ because the image is not of an actual child. But I would argue that all the thousands of children whose images were used, scraped off the internet, scraped off of school websites, scraped off of public social media profiles… all of those children are abused when their images are used to create this terrible content.”
The sheriff’s office says this is the first arrest it has made in which a suspect has been charged with possessing computer-generated or AI child pornography.
It remains unclear, however, whether the California law will stand. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down portions of the federal Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. They ruled that graphic manipulation of images — even if they depict children appearing to engage in sex — is protected under the First Amendment.
It is also unclear if all of the images allegedly in Bell’s possession were computer-generated or real.
Bell is currently in custody, being held on $1 million bail. He is scheduled to appear in court on Friday, Jan. 17.
