I thought that they were able to produce gold for 10+ years already, just that the price to produce is significantly more expensive than mining it.
Making gold is of trivial difficulty.
We have particle accelerators that have made much more difficult elements then gold.
The problem is it'll probably cost you 10K in electricity alone to make 1 atom of gold.
Amazingly BTC is heading in the same direction as mining diff keeps shooting higher.
Someday we will see huge mining farms using solar power, perhaps they will also create some gold.