How about something like "empty planet"? I'm thinking of taking photographs of famous places that are very busy (like Times Square) and digitally removing all the people.
I think seeing pictures of places that are very familiar, but devoid of people would be quite profound.
Maybe it's just a feature and not business, though.
I could be wrong about the photographer, but I believe it was Eugene Atget who has a photograph of a completely empty Paris street (I cound't find it online), one that is usually bustling. His effect was achieved by a very long time exposure, a consequence of the technology at the time.
Parisians were turned off by its creepy nature, and think your idea would definitely bring an eerie feel to Times Square.
Their demo at the top of the page looks nice, but I'm a little skeptic about the versatility of their algorithm to determine an image as "semantically valid" or not. I can see that being the RHP (really hard problem).
If you haven't seen it already Microsoft (yes Microsoft)has a similiar scene completion technology and the demo is pretty cool: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
US universities patent almost everything. Look at how Stanford operates... they get HUGE amount of revenue from research. Heck, even Google had to give a piece to Stanford.
I think seeing pictures of places that are very familiar, but devoid of people would be quite profound.
Maybe it's just a feature and not business, though.