Going beyond the title shows this isn't about gatekeeping terminology. It's about what we lose when we substitute genuine human interaction with AI comfort, and how simulating an experience isn't the same as living it. The experience never happened, so any AI image is precisely 'simulacra' - a copy without an original. The elder's smile in Chinatown couldn't have been prompted, and if it was, that would just prove the point about simulacra and missing the real experience.