diff --git a/src/rendering/image.py b/src/rendering/image.py
index 52e059b..76f27ac 100644
--- a/src/rendering/image.py
+++ b/src/rendering/image.py
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ def generate_thumbnail(image_path, resize_percent, min_width, max_width):
                 img = img.rotate(270, expand=True)
         except (AttributeError, KeyError, IndexError):
             # cases: image don't have getexif
-            exif = {}
+            exif = b""
 
         # Save the thumbnail to a BytesIO object
         thumbnail_io = BytesIO()