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.
In October and November 2022 he used custom fine-tuned diffusion models to make Excessize, twelve unique images critiquing American fast-food culture and mass production, auctioned as NFTs on his own smart contract in March 2024.Excessize served as a study for his breakthrough seriesLife In West America, 500 AI-generated images released on the platform BrainDrops in February 2023 that sold out within a minute.,The series stages stereotypical Americana scenes rooted in the 1960s, drawing comparisons to the documentary photography of Diane Arbus and Robert Frank's The Americans, with its fictional subjects grouped by how they relate to one another in space. Its AI-typical distortions — disfigured hands, misplaced limbs, fractured perspectives — are used deliberately, giving the documentary aesthetic a surreal, occasionally grotesque edge.
His digital landscape Pixelforest, merging traditional photographic language with AI-generated imagery, was shown in the group exhibition “Uncomputer”, staged by Unit London and GrailersDAO for Frieze London in 2023.,At Paris Photo 2023, presented by Louise Alexander Gallery and Fellowship at the Grand Palais, he showed REWORLD (2023), an AI-generated reflection on identity and cultural interplay, alongside photographers including Joel Meyerowitz and Laurie Simmons.In 2024 his work appeared in the group exhibition “Imagine Today”, curated by Anika Meier for EXPANDED.ART.In 2025 Louise Alexander Gallery and Fellowship paired REWORLD with handcrafted works from the gallery FUMI in the exhibition “All But Human”.He is represented by the agency WME.
