Profile
Roope Rainisto (born 1979) is a Finnish artist, designer, and photographer based in Helsinki, known for his pioneering work in AI-generated art.
A lifelong photographer – he received his first camera at age 13 – Rainisto has pursued creative expression across mediums, from writing and music to filmmaking. This diverse creative background, coupled with his design career, instilled in him a strong foundation in storytelling and problem-solving that now informs his art.
In the early 2020s, Rainisto began experimenting with generative AI as an extension of his photography practice. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, unable to travel, he turned to AI “virtual cameras” – using image-generation tools to explore imagined scenes just as he would explore the real world with a camera.
Around 2021 he started self-teaching AI art techniques, progressing through early algorithms to modern tools like DALL·E and Stable Diffusion. An early milestone was winning Claire Silver’s second AI Art contest in 2022(with his video piece “Temporary”), which brought him to the attention of the AI art community.
Rainisto’s breakthrough came with Life in West America (2023), a collection of AI-generated “post-photography” that presents a surreal yet familiar vision of the American West. Released on the BrainDrops platform in February 2023, the 500-piece series sold out within one minute of launch and has since become one of the highest-valued AI NFT art collections.
The success of this project cemented Rainisto’s reputation in the Web3 art world and led to further high-profile projects. He has since produced several other notable NFT collections on Ethereum, Solana, and Tezos, and his works have been showcased internationally, from contemporary art fairs to auction houses.
Rainisto devotes himself fully to art, exploring cutting-edge generative techniques while drawing on his photography roots. He describes his mission as “stretching the boundaries of reality” through AI –creating images that blur the real and the imagined. Throughout his rapid rise in AI art, Rainisto has maintained a philosophy that technology, especially AI, can augment creativity rather than diminish it.
He continues to innovate in the field, working on new ways to tell stories through generative imagery and multimedia, and is regarded as a leading figure in the emerging genre of AI art and AI post-photography.
He holds an M.Sc. in Information Networks from Helsinki University of Technology.
Previous to his current art career, spent over 25 years in the design industry (notably as a co-founder and Chief Design Officer of VR company "Varjo", and as a principal designer working for Microsoft and Nokia) before fully transitioning to digital art.
Roope Rainisto is represented by WME.