in the biological sense, life is a chemical process that involves intake of chemicals, energetic alteration of those chemicals, and elimination of waste.

we have created synthetic cells with created DNA using emptied host cells. the problem with that part of it is time. IF we could recreate the conditions of the first self replicating molecules in a lab, we would then have to maintain the energy input and chemical conditions long enough for variation or mutation to start favoring cytoplasmic sheaths, then wait long enough and maintain the right chemical conditions, including resource competition, for variation or mutation of that sheath into a protein shell to take over. this is a process of time, there is not really a way to "speed up" that process without artificial intervention, at which point you have not reproduced abiogenesis.

we may one day create real life, but it won't be the way it happened naturally, it will be by intentionally modifying chemicals to do what we need without waiting for the right variation or mutation to happen on its own.

We're not so far away as you might think. Here's something I clipped from a Wikipedia article titled Synthetic Life:

In the area of synthetic biology, a "living" artificial cell has been defined as a completely synthetically made cell that can capture energy, maintain ion gradients, contain macromolecules as well as store information and have the ability to mutate.[4] Such a cell is not technically feasible yet, but a variation of an artificial cell has been created in which a completely synthetic genome was introduced to genomically emptied host cells.[5] Although not completely artificial because the cytoplasmic components as well as the membrane from the host cell are kept, the engineered cell is under control of a synthetic genome and is able to replicate.

You are alluding to the Miller-Urey experiments, but missing a few ingredients. Methane and ammonia (for nitrogen) were also in the "stew". This didn't create life, but showed the common primordial gases with energy could form the building blocks of proteins and sugars.

The field of study is called Abiogenesis and a high level overview can be found on Wikipedia.

There was an experiment back in the e 1950`s [blogs.discovermagazine.com]

Did it the old fashioned way . Took about nine months . The important bit , is the container you mix it in . Needs to be warm , moist , stable , nurturing , and needs to know when it's time to let go .

If you create an artificial intelligence, that "thinks" it's real, and is self aware, is it life? What if it thinks it's alive, is self aware and we can't tell the difference? Is it truly alive then? If not, does it matter?

Just another take, not whether we have created life (the answer is no) but if we could, in a different way than you would usually view the question.

If we have a lab, put some water and some carbon in it and wait, like, half a billion years, then yes, I guess some life would form. Takes some time. As far as I know life was never created out of non living material, but there are reasonable theories out there of an abiogenesis.
There is definitely a blurry line of what might or might not be considered "life". We don't have a definition that is flawless, but a lot of things are definitely "alive" (animals, plants, ect...) and a lot of things are definitely not "alive" (stones, water, clouds).