In the absence of a definition of life, efforts in building living cells from scratch have relied on subjective evaluations of progress. This lack of well defined benchmarks has inhibited progress in building artificial cells and life-like technologies. To circumvent the problem of defining life, a cellular Turing test was implemented with artificial cells capable of two-way communication with natural cells. Success was quantified by fluorescence, lumeniscence, qPCR, and RNA-seq. Artifical cells showed a high degree of likeness to natural V. fischeri due to the exploitation of E. coli transcription-translation machinery. Artificial cells were also built that could sense P. aeruginosa and send chemical messages to V. harveyi, E. coli, and P. aeruginosa, demonstrating that artificial cell technology could be used to control complex networks of natural cells, potentially for therapeutic purposes.