diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/custom_modeling/idefics_image_processing.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/custom_modeling/idefics_image_processing.py
index 21aa3ff3..4760ae6f 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/custom_modeling/idefics_image_processing.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/custom_modeling/idefics_image_processing.py
@@ -201,8 +201,13 @@ class IdeficsImageProcessor(BaseImageProcessor):
                 response = requests.get(image_url_or_urls, stream=True, headers=headers, timeout=(1, 5))
                 response.raise_for_status()
                 content = response.content
-            else:
+            elif image.startswith("data:"):
+                # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17090571/is-there-a-way-to-set-background-image-as-a-base64-encoded-image
+                # data:image/png;base64,xxx
+                image = image.split(",")[-1]
                 content = base64.b64decode(image)
+            else:
+                raise ValueError(f"Unrecognized image {image}")
 
             try:
                 image = Image.open(BytesIO(content))
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/custom_modeling/idefics_processing.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/custom_modeling/idefics_processing.py
index 0fbcbeeb..98e43a27 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/custom_modeling/idefics_processing.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/custom_modeling/idefics_processing.py
@@ -112,6 +112,11 @@ def is_url(string):
     result = urlparse(string)
     return all([result.scheme, result.netloc])
 
+def is_image(string):
+    """Checks if the passed string contains a valid url and nothing else. e.g. if space is included it's immediately
+    invalidated the url"""
+    return is_url(string) or string.startswith("data:")
+
 
 class IdeficsProcessor(ProcessorMixin):
     r"""
@@ -314,7 +319,7 @@ class IdeficsProcessor(ProcessorMixin):
 
                 if isinstance(item, str):
                     item = item.strip(" ")
-                    if is_url(item):
+                    if is_image(item):
                         image = self.image_processor.fetch_images(item)
                         full_text += image_tokens(last_was_image)
                         image_objects.append(image)
@@ -339,6 +344,7 @@ class IdeficsProcessor(ProcessorMixin):
 
             image_objects = self.image_processor(image_objects, transform=transform)
 
+
             text_encoding = self.tokenizer(
                 text=full_text,
                 add_special_tokens=False,