text: We use CNNs to build a system that both classifies images of faces based on a variety of different facial attributes and generates new faces given a set of desired facial characteristics. After introducing the problem and providing context in the first section, we discuss recent work related to image generation in Section 2. In Section 3, we describe the methods used to fine-tune our CNN and generate new images using a novel approach inspired by a Gaussian mixture model. In Section 4, we discuss our working dataset and describe our preprocessing steps and handling of facial attributes. Finally, in Sections 5, 6 and 7, we explain our experiments and results and conclude in the following section. Our classification system has 82 test accuracy. Furthermore, our generation pipeline successfully creates well-formed faces.
  @cite_2: This paper introduces the Deep Recurrent Attentive Writer (DRAW) neural network architecture for image generation. DRAW networks combine a novel spatial attention mechanism that mimics the foveation of the human eye, with a sequential variational auto-encoding framework that allows for the iterative construction of complex images. The system substantially improves on the state of the art for generative models on MNIST, and, when trained on the Street View House Numbers dataset, it generates images that cannot be distinguished from real data with the naked eye.
summary: An alternate model has been posited by , who propose using a recurrent neural network architecture to generate digits. This architecture is a type of variational autoencoder, a recent advanced model that bridges deep learning and variational inference, since it is comprised of an encoder RNN that compresses the real images during training and a decoder RNN that reconstitutes images after receiving codes @cite_2 .