Try it now: AI Metadata Inspector
Free, no login — upload an image and read its embedded metadata in your browser.
What to know
AI prompt metadata lives in the file, not in the image itself. That metadata is routinely destroyed: social platforms re-encode on upload, format conversions drop PNG chunks, and many editors discard custom metadata on save. A stripped file looks identical but carries no prompt.
The hard truth is that a prompt cannot be read back out of pixels — if the metadata is gone from the copy you hold, it is not recoverable from that file alone. Recovery means locating a copy that still has it: the original export, the tool’s generation history, or a catalog that captured it at creation time.
How to recover it
- 1
Confirm the metadata is actually gone
Upload the file to the AI Metadata Inspector — sometimes partial metadata (EXIF/XMP) survives even when the prompt chunk does not.
- 2
Find the original file
Look for the untouched export straight from your AI tool, before any upload or conversion; that copy still holds the prompt.
- 3
Check the tool’s generation history
ComfyUI/Stable Diffusion output folders and Midjourney’s web history retain generations you can match back to the image.
- 4
Accept when a prompt is unrecoverable
If no copy retains the metadata and there is no history, the exact prompt cannot be recovered from the pixels — reconstruct it by prompting toward the look.
The only reliable defence against stripped metadata is capturing it at creation time. A catalog that extracts prompts on import means a later stripped share is never your only copy.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the most common questions.
Related recovery guides
Never lose a prompt again
Numonic extracts the prompt, model, seed, and settings from every AI image on import and keeps them searchable — so recovery stops being a rescue mission and the prompt is always attached to the work.