It is! The link goes to a “News and Views” summary (more background, less data) rather than the original article. Check out Figure 2 of the original article to see lightening being diverted https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-022-01139-z/figures/2

Here’s the reference if you want to read the whole thing (it’s open access)

Houard, A., Walch, P., Produit, T. et al. Laser-guided lightning. Nat. Photon. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01139-z

Probably because "following the straight line of the laser beam" should have a "for a bit" at the end; the lightning only goes (relatively) straight for a short distance so it doesn't look very impressive.

You can see the picture they are talking about here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-022-01139-z/figures/3

And this one shows two other examples of similar strikes along with the laser drawn on top: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-022-01139-z/figures/2

fig 2. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01139-z