princess di, kate middleton
© AP PhotoPrincess Diana and Kate Middleton on the cover of the July 4, 2011, issue of Newsweek magazine.
On the cover of Newsweek this week, Princess Diana is alive, well and walking with her daughter-in-law, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. It's an interesting idea but the computer-generated image is being called "creepy" and "cheap."

The accompanying article is written by Diana biographer and longtime provocateur Tina Brown. She's also Newsweek's editor-in-chief, having taken over after her online publication, the Daily Beast, merged late last year with the decades-old publication.

"What would she have been like?" Brown writes of Diana, who would have turned 50 on Friday, nearly 14 years after her death in a Paris car crash. "Still great-looking: that's a given."

The magazine's new issue also features an imagined Diana Facebook page and a slideshow comparing the fashion styles of Diana and Middleton, who married Diana's oldest child, Prince William, in April.

About the cover, a Los Angeles Times headline asked, "Shocking, brilliant or just plain cheap?" An Atlantic Wire headline added, "How Creepy Is Princess Diana's Ghost on the Cover of Newsweek?"

Brown's answer: Not at all.

"We wanted to bring the memory of Diana alive in a vivid image that transcends time and reflects my piece," she said in a statement Tuesday.