Bell is being charged under a new California law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, that criminalizes possessing AI-generated child sex abuse material, marking the first arrest under the law by detectives who focus on Internet crimes against children, according to the sheriff's office.

Darrin Bell, 49, a famed cartoonist who got his start at UC Berkeley, was arrested Wednesday and booked into the Sacramento County jail on possession of child porn, according to Internet Crimes Against Children detectives who were tipped off by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Darrin Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group for nearly 20 years, was arrested Wednesday in California for possession of child pornography.