diff --git a/lib/ansible/inventory/script.py b/lib/ansible/inventory/script.py
index 042fa8c24a..999e472f53 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/inventory/script.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/inventory/script.py
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ from ansible.errors import AnsibleError
 from ansible.inventory.host import Host
 from ansible.inventory.group import Group
 from ansible.module_utils.basic import json_dict_bytes_to_unicode
-from ansible.utils.unicode import to_str
+from ansible.utils.unicode import to_str, to_unicode
 
 
 class InventoryScript:
@@ -58,7 +58,13 @@ class InventoryScript:
         if sp.returncode != 0:
             raise AnsibleError("Inventory script (%s) had an execution error: %s " % (filename,stderr))
 
-        self.data = stdout
+        # make sure script output is unicode so that json loader will output
+        # unicode strings itself
+        try:
+            self.data = to_unicode(stdout, errors="strict")
+        except Exception as e:
+            raise AnsibleError("inventory data from {0} contained characters that cannot be interpreted as UTF-8: {1}".format(to_str(self.filename), to_str(e)))
+
         # see comment about _meta below
         self.host_vars_from_top = None
         self._parse(stderr)
@@ -78,8 +84,6 @@ class InventoryScript:
             sys.stderr.write(err + "\n")
             raise AnsibleError("failed to parse executable inventory script results from {0}: data needs to be formatted as a json dict".format(to_str(self.filename)))
 
-        self.raw  = json_dict_bytes_to_unicode(self.raw)
-
         group = None
         for (group_name, data) in self.raw.items():