While it would technically be considered a different species (though perhaps in the same genus as the parent species), I wouldn't consider it artificial life. All they did was repeatedly remove genes and see if the organism was viable. They still have no idea how most of the genes and regulation actually work. Simply modifying an organism doesn't constitute artificial life unless you consider dog breeds or other things we've created by breeding. By the same notion, it's not considered artificial life when a new custom chromosome (called a plasmid) is inserted into a bacteria or eukaryotic cell. It's done all the time and has been since the 80s.
All they did was get rid of "extraneous" genes that they don't deem necessary. They're trying to make a designer organism to synthesize/produce compounds. This is one step in achieving that, though it was arguably unnecessary. The hard part is creating genes/proteins to make it do what you actually want. This involves creating a new biochemical pathway (or modifying an existing one), probably creating new enzymes to recognize your intermediates, designing ER and golgi receptors to recognize their finished product and target it for excretion from the cell, creating proper regulation of this pathway, etc, etc. As you can see, it's very complicated. No one has successfully created their own enzyme or protein yet, let alone an entire biochemical pathway of them.
I would submit that even an organism of entirely new proteins isn't artificial. If it uses DNA, RNA and amino acids, it is just a variation on the same 4 billion year old theme.
These proteins would not be "created" their structure would almost certainly be evolved computationally. That would be enormously useful. And it would be damned cool.
But, I think true artificial life simply must be made out of something else.
While the current vein of research might never satisfy your stringent definition of "artificial life", I think that's somewhat beside the point. The usage here is synonymous with "designer life", which is becoming an increasing possibility.
I would agree with ingenium here. To add, almost everything Venter has done seems to be along the self-promotional line rather than the advancement of science. Seems he is more eager for attention than anything.
Indeed, the ramifications of this breakthrough are much larger than fighting climate change. An editor from the Guardian told me: "these new life forms can also fight terrorism, drunk driving and The Others."
When I asked if this development had any relevance in areas other than cliche current event subjects, he said "Absolutely. Since we know have an answer to where life comes from--the lab--humans won't have to waste all that time with existential talk and can spend more time reading the Global Warming and terrorism stories in our great news media."
What exactly was accomplished? Is the big deal that they removed a bunch of genes and it's still alive? That article left me feeling like they were just trying to tell me that this discovery is "omg awesome!"
All they did was get rid of "extraneous" genes that they don't deem necessary. They're trying to make a designer organism to synthesize/produce compounds. This is one step in achieving that, though it was arguably unnecessary. The hard part is creating genes/proteins to make it do what you actually want. This involves creating a new biochemical pathway (or modifying an existing one), probably creating new enzymes to recognize your intermediates, designing ER and golgi receptors to recognize their finished product and target it for excretion from the cell, creating proper regulation of this pathway, etc, etc. As you can see, it's very complicated. No one has successfully created their own enzyme or protein yet, let alone an entire biochemical pathway of them.