How to stop images from being wrapped in tags?

this is a function, that unwraps images from p tags inside the_content

/**
 * WP: Unwrap images from <p> tag
 * @param $content
 * @return mixed
 */
function so226099_filter_p_tags_on_images( $content ) {
    $content = preg_replace('/<p>\\s*?(<a .*?><img.*?><\\/a>|<img.*?>)?\\s*<\\/p>/s', '\1', $content);

    return $content;
}
add_filter('the_content', 'so226099_filter_p_tags_on_images');