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I would not even qualify this as an "artificial" experience. In both cases, the mice are subjected to very similar stimuli. The technology used to create those stimuli seems completely irrelevant to the resulting conditioning. I would have been surprised by any other outcome, to be honest.

This seems quite different from the type of memory that is described afterwards.

That was my thought as well, but the article was confusing. It was talking about memories when what it was describing seemed more like experiences, but I’m not familiar enough with the technical aspects to be sure.

Indeed. It seems to me that the more impressive bit is that the instilled neural pattern actually really correlated with the experience of the odor.

But the association with the foot shock was real to the second mouse as well.

What would the difference be?

An artificial memory would be if they directly altered the system for storage of memories (however that works), rather than spoofing inputs to that system.