diff --git a/src/Components/Modals/CuratorPanel.php b/src/Components/Modals/CuratorPanel.php
index a25ba6bb..d5b831ce 100644
--- a/src/Components/Modals/CuratorPanel.php
+++ b/src/Components/Modals/CuratorPanel.php
@@ -317,7 +317,7 @@ public function addFilesAction(): Action
                     if (!empty($item['exif'])) {
                         array_walk_recursive($item['exif'], function (&$entry) {
                             if (!mb_detect_encoding($entry, 'utf-8', true)) {
-                                $entry = utf8_encode($entry);
+                                $entry = mb_convert_encoding($entry, 'utf-8');
                             }
                         });
                     }