“Haters will say it’s AI,” joked the Grammy winner on social media

Ed Sheeran. Photo: Ed Sheeran/Instagram

There are layers to the story behind Ed Sheeran’s 2024 Halloween costume.

The 33-year-old Grammy winner celebrated the annual spooky holiday on Oct. 31 by dressing up in a monkey costume — nodding to a specific AI-generated image of him that’s become a popular online meme.

In the photo, Sheeran is bent over on a table, looking directly into the camera and smiling while sporting the monkey costume and holding up the original AI-generated photo on his phone.

Ed Sheeran.Ed Sheeran/Instagram

“Haters will say it’s AI,” he wrote in the caption on Instagram Thursday alongside two hashtags: #halloweenbruv and #feltcutemightdeletelater.

The original AI-generated photo in question is quite similar, as it features Sheeran wearing a monkey costume, holding an iPhone and smiling at the camera while on his hands and knees atop a table in an Apple Store.

The doctored image is based on a preexisting popular photo of a young boy wearing a monkey costume while using an iPad in an Apple Store, which became popularized on the internet in the early 2010s.

Ed Sheeran in Napa in May 2024.Jim Bennett/Getty

In previous years, Sheeran has dressed up as Chucky from Child’s Play, the gingerbread man, Austin Powers, Ron Weasley from Harry Potter and more characters for Halloween.

Sheeran’s knowledge of the Apple Store meme may come as a surprise to fans who know he doesn’t spend much time online and “got rid” of his phone. During a June appearance on Therapuss with Jake Shane, he admitted, “I haven’t had a phone since 2015.”

“I have something to like video stuff that would then go up on social media,” he explained, “but it’s not like an active working phone.”

The “Thinking Out Loud” musician’s choice to go without a phone came about in December 2015 — when he realized how many contacts he still had saved from before his career took off.

“I had the same number from like age 15, I think,” he said, “and I got famous and I had 10,000 contacts in my phone that would just… people would just text the whole time. And I was just constantly in touch with a lot of people.”