Ed Sheeran dresses up as an AI meme of himself in a monkey costume for Halloween

The story behind Ed Sheeran's 2024 Halloween costume is complex.

The 33-year-old Grammy winner celebrated the annual spooky holiday on October 31 by dressing up in a monkey costume — a nod to a certain AI-generated image of himself that has become a popular online meme.

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

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

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

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

In recent years, Sheeran has dressed up as Chucky Child's playthe Gingerbread Man, Austin Powers, Ron Weasley Harry Potter and other characters for Halloween.

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Sheeran's knowledge of the Apple Store meme may surprise fans who know he doesn't spend much time online and has “got rid” of his phone. During an appearance in June on Therapy with Jake ShaneHe admitted: “I haven’t had a phone since 2015.”

“I like videos that are then shared on social media,” he explained, “but it’s not like an actively working phone.”

The “Thinking Out Loud” musician's decision to give up his phone came in December 2015 – when he realized how many contacts he had saved before the start of his career.

“I think I had the same number since I was 15,” he said, “and I became famous and had 10,000 contacts in my phone where people were just texting all the time. And I was just constantly in touch with a lot of people.