Esquire Interviewed an AI Facsimile of a Living Actor and Called It Journalism

Mackenyu's unavailability was real. What Esquire Singapore turned it into was a policy: rather than delay the cover, the publication used Claude's AI recreation to simulate the interview and published the result as a feature. When readers and critics objected, the magazine did not issue a correction. It , a framing that treats simulation as one more editorial instrument — closer to illustration than to fabrication. That characterization is now the story, because it determines whether other publications see this as a cautionary…