Roope Rainisto (Finnish, b. 1979) is an artist and photographer based in Helsinki who creates AI-generated 'post-photography' that blurs real and imagined scenes. He spent over 25 years in the design industry, including as co-founder and Chief Design Officer of the VR company Varjo and as a principal designer at Microsoft and Nokia, before turning fully to art.
A photographer since receiving his first camera at thirteen, Rainisto holds an M.Sc. in Information Networks from Helsinki University of Technology. Unable to travel during the COVID-19 lockdowns, he began using AI image generators as a kind of virtual camera to explore imagined scenes, and by 2021 was self-teaching AI art techniques, from early algorithms through to DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. In 2022 his video piece Temporary won Claire Silver's second AI Art contest, bringing him to the attention of the AI art community. He has named the writer Franz Kafka and the filmmaker David Lynch among the artists who inspire him.
