Venter's natural artificial life

Let’s call an apple an apple. I don’t think what Craig Venter did may be called “artificial life” or even “artificial cell”. He sinthetized the DNA of a bacteria, put it in a cell and the cell started to reproduce normally. That is a truly important and amazing advancement, but the pre-existing living cell was a natural living bacteria. So we cannot call the result an “artificial cell” (see also this Science Now text). However, many newspapers and scientists around the world used that expression. Venter’s Institute itself talked about “sinthetic cell” in its press release. It does not seem so.