It would be interesting to build a codec with human preferences in mind; you might end up with images that most people think looks better than the original at a fraction of the size - how you make those choices is very difficult though.
Some video encoders already incorporate perceptual optimizations (eg, x264's psy-rd and psy-trellis) that "look" better but lead to objectively worse results with traditional image quality metrics.
Audio codecs, however, have been using psychoacoustic models for decades. Frequencies outside the human hearing range are clipped, masked noises are discarded, voice codecs emphasize the range of human speech, etc.
