  Circularly polarized light (CPL) can induce an asymmetry between the number
of left- and right-handed chiral quasiparticles in Dirac and Weyl semimetals.
We show that if the photoresponse of the material is dominated by chiral
quasiparticles, the total chiral charge induced in the material by CPL can be
evaluated in a model-independent way through the chiral anomaly. In the
presence of an external magnetic field perpendicular to the incident CPL, this
allows to predict the linear density of the induced photocurrent resulting from
the chiral magnetic effect. The predicted effect should exist in any kind of
Dirac or Weyl materials, with both symmetric and asymmetric band structure. An
estimate of the resulting chiral magnetic photocurrent in a typical Dirac
semimetal irradiated by an infrared laser of intensity $\simeq 5 \times 10^6\,
\mathrm{W/m^2}$ and a wavelength of $\lambda \simeq 10\, \mu\mathrm{m}$ in an
external magnetic field $B \simeq 2\, \mathrm{T}$ yields a current $J \simeq
50\,\mathrm{nA}$ in the laser spot of size $\simeq 50\,\mu\mathrm{m}$. This
current scales linearly with the magnetic field and wavelength, opening up
possibilities for applications in photonics, optoelectronics, and THz sensing.
