Helsinki, Finland
Roope Rainisto (b. 1979) is a Finnish artist, designer, and photographer based in Helsinki, renowned for his pioneering work in AI-generated art.
A lifelong photographer - having received his first camera at the age of 13 - Rainisto has explored creative expression across multiple disciplines, including writing, music, and filmmaking. His diverse artistic background, combined with a career in design, has shaped a distinctive approach to storytelling and problem-solving that now informs his artistic practice.
In the early 2020s, Rainisto began experimenting with generative AI as an extension of his photographic work. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, unable to travel, he turned to AI-driven “virtual cameras,” using image-generation tools to explore imagined landscapes as he would have with a real camera in the physical world.
His breakthrough came with Life in West America (2023), followed by REWORLD (2024), two body of works created using AI and classified as “post-photography” that presents a surreal yet eerily 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.
Rainisto’s work bridges cutting-edge generative techniques with his deep photographic sensibility. He describes his artistic mission as “stretching the boundaries of reality” through AI, crafting images that blur the line between the real and the imagined. As AI art rapidly evolves, he remains a firm advocate for technology as an amplifier of creativity rather than a substitute for it.
Continuously pushing the limits of generative imagery and multimedia storytelling, Rainisto is regarded as a leading figure in the emerging genre of AI art and AI post-photography.
REWORLD explores ideas around the concept of possibility. The artworks present events that could be possible, showing multiple alternative possibilities, happening at the same time, or the same event seen happening from multiple viewpoints. REWORLD also looks at us functioning in society: how easy it is to lose your own identity and become someone else, to lose yourself in the crowd. Are we the same as everyone else? On some level, there is a natural desire to do so. To belong, to be part of a larger cause. To mean something to someone.
“REWORLD also looks at us functioning in a society: how easy it is to lose your own identity and become someone else, to lose yourself in the crowd. Are we the same as everyone else? On some level, there is a natural desire to do so.“
- Roope Rainisto
