Before ChatGPT made artificial intelligence a household topic, creator Rourke Heath had already built a reputation for experimenting with the internet’s strangest ideas. Today, his focus has shifted from creating viral moments to something more ambitious: building GenHQ, an AI education community that aims to help creators, marketers and entrepreneurs turn artificial intelligence into opportunity rather than uncertainty.
The journey to GenHQ has been anything but conventional. Long before AI became part of everyday conversation, Heath was already finding unusual ways to capture people’s attention.
Sleep Streaming
One of the pioneers of what became known as sleep streaming, he invited thousands of people to watch him sleep while viewers could pay to flash his lights, trigger noises and generally wreak havoc using smart devices in his bedroom. It sounds utterly bonkers, and at times it was.
“You could pay like £50 and I would chug a beer,” he says. “Sometimes when I got drunk, I would fall asleep and kind of sleep through a lot of everything.”
The sleep streaming earned him a huge online following, but it was never really about sleeping. It was about creativity.
“I cared so deeply about social media and the creator economy,” he says. “I wanted to make it as a creator.”
That restless curiosity has shaped every chapter of his career. He rented a ski chalet in the French Alps with friends for six months to film their own reality series. He built technology that allowed him to livestream from remote locations before it became commonplace. He made documentaries, experimented with new formats and constantly searched for the next idea that nobody else had tried.
“I’ve always been obsessed with things that don’t feel like they’re in social norms to begin with, but then kind of become social eventually.”
It wasn’t always glamorous. Chasing creative ideas meant taking risks, and sometimes watching them fail. Rourke threw everything he had into learning his craft, spending twelve hours a day editing videos, teaching himself storytelling and determined to make a living doing what he loved. Eventually the money ran out.
“I had fourteen grand in my bank but I soon hit zero in my account,” he recalls. Then came an extraordinary act of faith. His grandmother, now in her nineties, gave him part of his inheritance early so he could keep pursuing his dream. It’s a story he tells with obvious affection, and one that reminds us how often success is built on someone else’s belief in us.
When artificial intelligence arrived, Rourke didn’t see it as a threat. He saw another creative tool. Where others worried about what AI might replace, he became fascinated by what it could help people create.
“I wanted to educate myself and be more involved about what it can actually do,” he says.
GenHQ
That curiosity has grown into GenHQ, an online community where filmmakers, content creators, marketers and businesses learn how to use AI in practical ways. More importantly, they learn from one another. Rourke talks less about technology than he does about opportunity. The community meets several times a week, members share their work, receive feedback and, he says proudly, many have gone on to build successful businesses of their own.
For all the headlines predicting AI will take jobs, Rourke’s ambition is the exact opposite. He wants to create them. His goal is to help generate 100,000 new opportunities by giving people the confidence and skills to embrace technology rather than fear it. He believes education is the missing piece, and that if young people are introduced to AI in the right way, it can unlock creativity instead of replacing it.
Listening to him, it becomes clear that AI is not really the story instead it is creativity. Every twist in his career has come from asking, “What if?” What if people watched someone sleep? What if you could livestream from places nobody else could? What if technology could help ordinary people become extraordinary creators?
Yet perhaps the biggest surprise came as our conversation drew to a close. For someone whose career has been built online, Rourke’s vision of success has very little to do with screens.
“Life is not about being. Life is about sharing experiences and emotions,” he says.
His dream isn’t to spend more hours behind a laptop or build the biggest AI company in the world. It’s to know that what he has created continues to help other people while he steps away from the keyboard. Time with family, friends – sharing experiences. Perhaps sitting on a beach somewhere, knowing that technology was never the destination. It was simply the vehicle that allowed him to build a life worth living.
