Take the images on amihotornot as a starting "population". Use the amihotornot rating service as an evaluation metric. Combine two photos by using the "morphing" algorithms that were all the rage a few years ago (remember that Michael Jackson video?). Submit the results for evaluation. Repeat.
The goal here is to combine existing photos to synthesize new photographs of fictional people who are as attractive as possible.
Morphing algorithms require human involvement and work best with similar backgrounds, but these problems can be overcome, particularly with the aid of modern machine vision work that automatically detects faces and facial features in images.
(I know, amihotornot is yesterday's fad, but I just had the idea. I'm not sure this is categorized correctly.)-- egnor, Mar 03 2001 Evolving faces from principal components http://www.stir.ac....pjbh1/BRMIC2000.pdfIn support of crime witnesses, not Internet voyeurs. Definitely departs from morphing towards a more structural separation of a face into texture on a grid ("eigenshape"), created manually. The texture is morphed, the grid parameters change, and the resulting random images are much more convincing. [jutta, Mar 03 2001] HMM http://members.ud.com/vypc/hmmer/Searching for genetic similarities by the principle that certain events have predictable anticedents. [reensure, Mar 03 2001] If They Mated http://nbcpublish.c...'Brien/iftheymated/ [rapid transit, Oct 05 2004] There's something really creepy about the grids of similar-but-distinct floating disembodied synthetic heads in that paper. But, yes, that's clearly a superior technique.-- egnor, Mar 03 2001 From the title of this idea I envisaged a creepy eugenics organisation which would force amihotornot.com 'winners' to reproduce.-- hippo, Mar 07 2001 ever seen the dave gorman collection? well see what the average dave gorman looks like and youll soon see wht a bad idea it is... that reminds me, i havnt been on amihotornot for a while... bye-- panthaz paradise, Apr 03 2001 This was done in a Discover magazine a while back. They showed people pictures of women's faces, then added the features highest-rated together, created a run of faces with those, and so on. Eventually it came out to a short-haired blond blue-eyed girl with a very pointed chin.-- StarChaser, May 22 2001 Steven Pinker mentions composite attractiveness, and in general, the factors that go into attractiveness in, *How the Mind Works* (pp 483-7). He cites a number of interesting papers.-- beland, May 26 2003 People might want to search the web for the 'Most Average Facial Appearance' effect - it's a tendency to prefer faces in which the eyes, nose, lips and other features are close to the average of a population.
(from 'Universal Principles of Design, Lidwell et al, 1-59253-007-9)-- stevec2, Jan 28 2004 random, halfbakery