650,000 First Impressionists: Hit Russian Art App Prisma to Take on Tokyo

The interview came after the app, which uses sophisticated algorithms to turn smartphone photos into stylized artwork, shot up in popularity in 10 of the former Soviet republics.

These included Russia, Belarus, Estonia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Armenia and Ukraine, where the app skyrocketed to the top spot in the App Store in record time.

"We are very much interested in the Japanese market because Japan has a completely different culture. We plan to enter there as soon as July," Moiseenkov said.

He also said that as far as Prisma is concerned, his team will introduce special innovations which could be of interest to Japanese users, including anime and manga.

"Of course, there will be special filters for the Japanese audience because we want to please all of our customers regardless of their location. We are open to suggestions as we constantly hammer out new formats and features for Prisma," he added.

Using artificial intelligence, Prisma transforms photos into paintings in the style of world renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Gogh.

The app uses a deep learning method called convolutional neural networks, and only refers to the original picture for guidance in the creation of the final image.

Launched on June 11, Prisma has already garnered a whopping 650,000 downloads across Russia alone. According to Moiseenkov, his team never expected such a breakthrough.

Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has already uploaded the program to Instagram, posting a photo named "the evening in Moscow through Prisma."