If I buy an "authentic Rolex" and receive a Chinese Rolex clone that's built similarly based on observations of a real Rolex, I'm going to feel scammed and very upset. And I'm much more protective of my memories than I would be of a watch.
ultimately we oughta think about what we are referring to. if we are talking about a photograph taken by someone, the authenticity is ultimately coming from the combination of the photograph and camera used. so when you think of a genuine photo in this scenario you expect it to be fundamentally taken by the user by a particular camera to create a particular photograph. you can use devices to take a photo without pressing the button, such as a timer, but the photograph and camera are both fundamental to the authenticity of the image. if the camera is no longer entirely involved in the generation of the photograph I would say that it is no longer genuine.
Reference driven as described in the article is more appropriate, but alas it is verbose. normally such pedantry bores me, but in this case it's pretty tantamount to what it is being presented in this case.
Two anecdotes:
1. A friend of mine met his favourite author (traveled from one continent to another for a signing event). When he shaked hands with the author, a friend took a photo. A lady (still hated by us!) step in the middle, and blocked the photo. Maybe an IA or a talented person could remove her, use a footage photo of the author and rebuild the photo... but why? What's the purpose of that?
2. A few months ago during the pandemic I scanned all the printed pictures of my grand parents with my phone. Aftre scanning like 200s, I checked one and I zoomed in: the stupid app applied some IA to make it better and it just was worse. I don't care if it looks better for the untrained eye: my grandparents didn't look like that. I now have stupid horrible verson of the scanned photos, where my grand parents appear with smooth skin and weird eyes.
A different angle, if a friend had painted the encounter instead, it wouldn't be exact but it would be a snapshot of a memory.
I'm not hugely arguing in favour of it but I think there's different scales here, from cameras doing "merge pictures half a second apart so people have their eyes open" to "totally change their face".
No more so than "virtual," which used to mean "true." Or "literal" which used to be the opposite of "figurative." It's just another word being used auto-autonymically.
Definitio fugit.
Regardless, I'm pretty sure "reconstructed" it the honest word to use.
They also need to be very, very careful when introducing capability to falsify photographic images convincingly.
Using the term "authentic" for this (and how do they even know what's an authentic memory?) doesn't sound like being very, very careful. It sounds like being gratuitously reckless.
Call it "realistic". Words matter.
(Disclaimer: work for Google but have nothing to do with this project.)
Literally is often used in a sarcastic context. That sarcasm depends on the word meaning what it means.