diff --git a/server/tests/models/test_bloom.py b/server/tests/models/test_bloom.py
index 66df708adcb..32ee6686b6b 100644
--- a/server/tests/models/test_bloom.py
+++ b/server/tests/models/test_bloom.py
@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@ def default_pb_request(default_pb_parameters, default_pb_stop_parameters):
     return generate_pb2.Request(
         id=0,
         inputs="Test",
+        input_chunks=generate_pb2.Input(chunks=[generate_pb2.InputChunk(text="Test")]),
         prefill_logprobs=True,
         truncate=100,
         parameters=default_pb_parameters,
diff --git a/server/tests/models/test_causal_lm.py b/server/tests/models/test_causal_lm.py
index 250fa354b47..6e6463bc948 100644
--- a/server/tests/models/test_causal_lm.py
+++ b/server/tests/models/test_causal_lm.py
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ def default_pb_request(default_pb_parameters, default_pb_stop_parameters):
     return generate_pb2.Request(
         id=0,
         inputs="Test",
+        input_chunks=generate_pb2.Input(chunks=[generate_pb2.InputChunk(text="Test")]),
         prefill_logprobs=True,
         truncate=100,
         parameters=default_pb_parameters,
diff --git a/server/tests/models/test_santacoder.py b/server/tests/models/test_santacoder.py
index 1e40e766d67..cb2622d9b53 100644
--- a/server/tests/models/test_santacoder.py
+++ b/server/tests/models/test_santacoder.py
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ def default_pb_request(default_pb_parameters, default_pb_stop_parameters):
     return generate_pb2.Request(
         id=0,
         inputs="def",
+        input_chunks=generate_pb2.Input(chunks=[generate_pb2.InputChunk(text="def")]),
         prefill_logprobs=True,
         truncate=100,
         parameters=default_pb_parameters,
@@ -32,6 +33,13 @@ def default_fim_pb_request(default_pb_parameters, default_pb_stop_parameters):
     return generate_pb2.Request(
         id=0,
         inputs="<fim-prefix>def<fim-suffix>world<fim-middle>",
+        input_chunks=generate_pb2.Input(
+            chunks=[
+                generate_pb2.InputChunk(
+                    text="<fim-prefix>def<fim-suffix>world<fim-middle>"
+                )
+            ]
+        ),
         prefill_logprobs=True,
         truncate=100,
         parameters=default_pb_parameters,
diff --git a/server/tests/models/test_seq2seq_lm.py b/server/tests/models/test_seq2seq_lm.py
index 735ab5eb562..943c3b0820d 100644
--- a/server/tests/models/test_seq2seq_lm.py
+++ b/server/tests/models/test_seq2seq_lm.py
@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ def default_pb_request(default_pb_parameters, default_pb_stop_parameters):
     return generate_pb2.Request(
         id=0,
         inputs="Test",
+        input_chunks=generate_pb2.Input(chunks=[generate_pb2.InputChunk(text="Test")]),
         prefill_logprobs=True,
         truncate=100,
         parameters=default_pb_parameters,
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/causal_lm.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/causal_lm.py
index 81a02163dc9..e896c831bd3 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/causal_lm.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/causal_lm.py
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@
 from typing import Optional, Tuple, List, Type, Dict
 
 from text_generation_server.models import Model
+from text_generation_server.utils.chunks import concat_text_chunks
 from text_generation_server.utils.tokens import batch_top_tokens
 from text_generation_server.models.types import (
     Batch,
@@ -86,7 +87,8 @@ def from_pb(
         max_decode_tokens = 0
         for i, r in enumerate(pb.requests):
             requests_idx_mapping[r.id] = i
-            inputs.append(r.inputs)
+            inputs.append(concat_text_chunks(r.input_chunks.chunks))
+
             next_token_choosers.append(
                 NextTokenChooser.from_pb(r.parameters, device, tokenizer)
             )
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/flash_causal_lm.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/flash_causal_lm.py
index d8c8838cfaa..acf77b09f5c 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/flash_causal_lm.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/flash_causal_lm.py
@@ -11,9 +11,10 @@
 from dataclasses import dataclass
 from opentelemetry import trace
 from transformers import PreTrainedTokenizerBase
-from typing import Optional, Tuple, List, Type, Dict
+from typing import Iterable, Optional, Tuple, List, Type, Dict
 
 from huggingface_hub.constants import HUGGINGFACE_HUB_CACHE
+from text_generation_server.utils.chunks import concat_text_chunks
 from text_generation_server.utils.import_utils import SYSTEM
 from text_generation_server.models import Model
 from text_generation_server.utils.tokens import batch_top_tokens
@@ -127,11 +128,13 @@ def to_pb(self) -> generate_pb2.CachedBatch:
         )
 
     @classmethod
-    def batch_tokenized_inputs(cls, requests, tokenizer):
+    def batch_tokenized_inputs(
+        cls, requests: Iterable[generate_pb2.Request], tokenizer
+    ):
         batch_inputs = []
         max_truncation = 0
         for r in requests:
-            batch_inputs.append(r.inputs)
+            batch_inputs.append(concat_text_chunks(r.input_chunks.chunks))
             max_truncation = max(max_truncation, r.truncate)
 
         batch_tokenized_inputs = tokenizer(
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/galactica.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/galactica.py
index 4656fd45e84..d0f2b9154e2 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/galactica.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/galactica.py
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@
     weight_files,
     Weights,
 )
+from text_generation_server.utils.chunks import concat_text_chunks
 
 # CREDIT: Papers with code => https://github.com/paperswithcode/galai/blob/main/galai/utils.py
 
@@ -91,7 +92,9 @@ def from_pb(
         for i, r in enumerate(pb.requests):
             requests_idx_mapping[r.id] = i
             # Add escape_custom_split_sequence to the CausalLMBatch logic
-            inputs.append(escape_custom_split_sequence(r.inputs))
+            inputs.append(
+                escape_custom_split_sequence(concat_text_chunks(r.input_chunks.chunks))
+            )
             next_token_choosers.append(
                 NextTokenChooser.from_pb(r.parameters, device, tokenizer)
             )
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/idefics_causal_lm.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/idefics_causal_lm.py
index e78a9655a5b..f507d669936 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/idefics_causal_lm.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/idefics_causal_lm.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
-import torch
+from io import BytesIO
+from PIL import Image
 import torch
 import time
 
@@ -21,11 +22,6 @@
 )
 from text_generation_server.pb import generate_pb2
 from text_generation_server.utils import NextTokenChooser, StoppingCriteria, Sampling
-from text_generation_server.models.vlm_causal_lm import split
-
-import re
-
-IMAGES = re.compile(r"!\[[^\]]*\]\((.*?)\s*(\"(?:.*[^\"])\")?\s*\)")
 
 
 tracer = trace.get_tracer(__name__)
@@ -109,7 +105,7 @@ def from_pb_processor(
         max_decode_tokens = 0
         for i, r in enumerate(pb.requests):
             requests_idx_mapping[r.id] = i
-            inputs.append(r.inputs)
+            inputs.append(r.input_chunks.chunks)
             next_token_choosers.append(
                 NextTokenChooser.from_pb(r.parameters, device, tokenizer)
             )
@@ -128,8 +124,15 @@ def from_pb_processor(
         for inp in inputs:
             # Each input is encoded into a list, where each element of this input list is either a string or a URL
             prompt = []
-            for chunk in split(inp):
-                prompt.append(chunk["content"])
+            for chunk in inp:
+                chunk_type = chunk.WhichOneof("chunk")
+                if chunk_type == "text":
+                    prompt.append(chunk.text)
+                elif chunk_type == "image":
+                    image = Image.open(BytesIO(chunk.image.data))
+                    prompt.append(image)
+                else:
+                    raise RuntimeError(f"Invalid chunk type {chunk_type}")
             prompts.append(prompt)
 
         # The processor replaces the call to tokenizer, and
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/mamba.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/mamba.py
index d9f905906ac..3133a137d9a 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/mamba.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/mamba.py
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@
     Generation,
     GeneratedText,
 )
+from text_generation_server.utils.chunks import concat_text_chunks
 from text_generation_server.utils.tokens import batch_top_tokens, Sampling
 from dataclasses import dataclass
 from text_generation_server.utils import NextTokenChooser, StoppingCriteria, Sampling
@@ -139,7 +140,7 @@ def from_pb(
         max_decode_tokens = 0
         for i, r in enumerate(pb.requests):
             requests_idx_mapping[r.id] = i
-            inputs.append(r.inputs)
+            inputs.append(concat_text_chunks(r.input_chunks.chunks))
             next_token_choosers.append(
                 NextTokenChooser.from_pb(r.parameters, device, tokenizer)
             )
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/pali_gemma.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/pali_gemma.py
index d94b9526582..e883ce02e18 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/pali_gemma.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/pali_gemma.py
@@ -1,55 +1,48 @@
+from io import BytesIO
+from PIL import Image
 import torch
 import torch.distributed
 from opentelemetry import trace
-from typing import Optional, Tuple
+from typing import Iterable, Optional, Tuple
 from text_generation_server.models.vlm_causal_lm import (
     VlmCausalLM,
     VlmCausalLMBatch,
     image_text_replacement,
-    load_data_uri,
-    split,
 )
 from text_generation_server.models.custom_modeling.flash_pali_gemma_modeling import (
     PaliGemmaForConditionalGeneration,
 )
-from transformers import AutoProcessor, AutoConfig, AutoImageProcessor
+from transformers import AutoProcessor, AutoConfig
+
+from text_generation_server.pb.generate_pb2 import Request
 
 tracer = trace.get_tracer(__name__)
 
 
 class PaliGemmaBatch(VlmCausalLMBatch):
     @classmethod
-    def batch_tokenized_inputs(cls, requests, tokenizer, processor, config):
+    def batch_tokenized_inputs(
+        cls, requests: Iterable[Request], tokenizer, processor, config
+    ):
         batch_inputs = []
         image_inputs = []
         max_truncation = 0
         for r in requests:
-            chunks = split(r.inputs)
             full_text = ""
             image_id = 0
-            for chunk in chunks:
-                if chunk["type"] == "text":
-                    full_text += "<bos>" + chunk["content"] + "\n"
-                elif chunk["type"] == "image":
-                    image = chunk["content"]
-                    # Should never receive URLs anymore, processing should be done
-                    # On the rust layer.
-                    # This avoid making n queries per TP
-                    # if image.startswith("https://") or image.startswith("http://"):
-                    #     image = processor.image_processor.fetch_images(image)
-                    if image.startswith("data:"):
-                        image = load_data_uri(image)
-                    else:
-                        raise RuntimeError(
-                            "Cannot process input image not starting with data:"
-                        )
+            for chunk in r.input_chunks.chunks:
+                chunk_type = chunk.WhichOneof("chunk")
+                if chunk_type == "text":
+                    full_text += "<bos>" + chunk.text + "\n"
+                elif chunk_type == "image":
+                    image = Image.open(BytesIO(chunk.image.data))
                     # TODO do_convert_RGB should be on by default ?
                     image = image.convert("RGB")
                     image_input = processor.image_processor(image, return_tensors="pt")
                     full_text += image_text_replacement(image_input, config, image_id)
                     image_inputs.append(image_input)
                 else:
-                    raise RuntimeError(f"Invalid chunk type {chunk['type']}")
+                    raise RuntimeError(f"Invalid chunk type {chunk_type}")
 
             batch_inputs.append(full_text)
             max_truncation = max(max_truncation, r.truncate)
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/seq2seq_lm.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/seq2seq_lm.py
index 6a0c812f277..3bd095564c3 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/seq2seq_lm.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/seq2seq_lm.py
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForSeq2SeqLM, PreTrainedTokenizerBase
 from typing import Optional, Tuple, List, Type, Dict
 
+from text_generation_server.utils.chunks import concat_text_chunks
 from text_generation_server.utils.tokens import batch_top_tokens
 from text_generation_server.models import Model
 from text_generation_server.models.types import (
@@ -93,7 +94,7 @@ def from_pb(
         padding_right_offset = 0
         max_decode_tokens = 0
         for i, r in enumerate(pb.requests):
-            inputs.append(r.inputs)
+            inputs.append(concat_text_chunks(r.input_chunks.chunks))
             requests_idx_mapping[r.id] = i
             decoder_input_lengths.append(1)
             next_token_choosers.append(
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/models/vlm_causal_lm.py b/server/text_generation_server/models/vlm_causal_lm.py
index 92d790709e7..59a6fab1cd0 100644
--- a/server/text_generation_server/models/vlm_causal_lm.py
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/models/vlm_causal_lm.py
@@ -1,12 +1,9 @@
-import re
 import torch
-import math
 from PIL import Image
 from io import BytesIO
-import base64
 
 from opentelemetry import trace
-from typing import Optional, Tuple, List, Type, Dict
+from typing import Iterable, Optional, Tuple, List, Type, Dict
 
 from transformers import PreTrainedTokenizerBase
 from transformers.image_processing_utils import select_best_resolution
@@ -18,25 +15,6 @@
 
 tracer = trace.get_tracer(__name__)
 
-IMAGES = re.compile(r"!\[[^\]]*\]\((.*?)\s*(\"(?:.*[^\"])\")?\s*\)")
-
-
-def split(string) -> List[Dict[str, str]]:
-    parts = []
-    cursor = 0
-    for pattern in IMAGES.finditer(string):
-        start = pattern.start()
-        if start != cursor:
-            parts.append({"type": "text", "content": string[cursor:start]})
-
-        parts.append({"type": "image", "content": pattern.group(1)})
-        cursor = pattern.end()
-
-    if cursor != len(string):
-        parts.append({"type": "text", "content": string[cursor:]})
-
-    return parts
-
 
 def get_anyres_image_grid_shape(image_size, grid_pinpoints, patch_size):
     """
@@ -129,13 +107,6 @@ def get_number_of_features(height: int, width: int, config) -> int:
     return unpadded_features + newline_features + base_features
 
 
-def load_data_uri(image_uri: str) -> Image.Image:
-    image_uri = image_uri.split(",")[-1]
-    content = base64.b64decode(image_uri)
-    image = Image.open(BytesIO(content))
-    return image
-
-
 class VlmCausalLMBatch(FlashCausalLMBatch):
     pixel_values: Optional[List[torch.Tensor]]
     pixel_attention_mask: Optional[List[torch.Tensor]]
@@ -159,35 +130,26 @@ def filter(self, request_ids: List[int]):
         return batch
 
     @classmethod
-    def batch_tokenized_inputs(cls, requests, tokenizer, processor, config):
+    def batch_tokenized_inputs(
+        cls, requests: Iterable[generate_pb2.Request], tokenizer, processor, config
+    ):
         batch_inputs = []
         image_inputs = []
         max_truncation = 0
         for r in requests:
-            chunks = split(r.inputs)
             full_text = ""
             image_id = 0
-            for chunk in chunks:
-                if chunk["type"] == "text":
-                    full_text += chunk["content"]
-                elif chunk["type"] == "image":
-                    image = chunk["content"]
-                    # Should never receive URLs anymore, processing should be done
-                    # On the rust layer.
-                    # This avoid making n queries per TP
-                    # if image.startswith("https://") or image.startswith("http://"):
-                    #     image = processor.image_processor.fetch_images(image)
-                    if image.startswith("data:"):
-                        image = load_data_uri(image)
-                    else:
-                        raise RuntimeError(
-                            "Cannot process input image not starting with data:"
-                        )
+            for chunk in r.input_chunks.chunks:
+                chunk_type = chunk.WhichOneof("chunk")
+                if chunk_type == "text":
+                    full_text += chunk.text
+                elif chunk_type == "image":
+                    image = Image.open(BytesIO(chunk.image.data))
                     image_input = processor.image_processor(image, return_tensors="pt")
                     full_text += image_text_replacement(image_input, config, image_id)
                     image_inputs.append(image_input)
                 else:
-                    raise RuntimeError(f"Invalid chunk type {chunk['type']}")
+                    raise RuntimeError(f"Invalid chunk type {chunk_type}")
 
             batch_inputs.append(full_text)
             max_truncation = max(max_truncation, r.truncate)
diff --git a/server/text_generation_server/utils/chunks.py b/server/text_generation_server/utils/chunks.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..73962ea39e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/server/text_generation_server/utils/chunks.py
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+from typing import Iterable
+
+from loguru import logger
+
+from text_generation_server.pb import generate_pb2
+
+
+def concat_text_chunks(chunks: Iterable[generate_pb2.InputChunk]) -> str:
+    """
+    Concatenate text in text chunks. Non-text chunks are dropped.
+    """
+    text = None
+    for chunk in chunks:
+        chunk_type = chunk.WhichOneof("chunk")
+        if chunk_type == "text":
+            if text is None:
+                text = chunk.text
+            else:
+                raise NotImplementedError("Request contained more than one text chunk")
+        else:
+            # We cannot reject this, e.g. warmup sends an image chunk.
+            logger.debug(f"Encountered non-text chunk type {chunk_type}")
+
+    if text is None:
+        raise NotImplementedError("Request without a text chunk")
+
+    return text