Could not import module 'AutoTokenizer'. Are this object's requirements defined correctly?

[octavianBordeanu]

System Info

• torch @ https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu124/torch-2.6.0%2Bcu124-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl
• torchaudio @ https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu124/torchaudio-2.6.0%2Bcu124-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl
• torchvision @ https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu124/torchvision-0.21.0%2Bcu124-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl
• unsloth==2025.6.12
• unsloth_zoo==2025.6.8
• accelerate==1.8.1
• bitsandbytes==0.46.0
• pydantic==2.11.7
• pydantic_core==2.33.2
• tokenizers==0.21.2
• transformers==4.52.4
• treelite==4.4.1
• treescope==0.1.9
• triton==3.2.0
• trl==0.19.0
• xformers==0.0.29.post3
• sympy==1.13.1
• cut-cross-entropy==25.1.1
• Python 3.10.16
• NVIDIA A10G (CUDA Version: 12.5)
• Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS

Who can help?

@ArthurZucker @itazap

Information

• The official example scripts
• My own modified scripts

Tasks

• An officially supported task in the examples folder (such as GLUE/SQuAD, ...)
• My own task or dataset (give details below)

Reproduction

from transformers import AutoTokenizer

---

ModuleNotFoundError Traceback (most recent call last)
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2045, in _LazyModule.getattr(self, name)
2044 try:
-> 2045 module = self._get_module(self._class_to_module[name])
2046 value = getattr(module, name)

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2075, in _LazyModule._get_module(self, module_name)
2074 except Exception as e:
-> 2075 raise e

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2073, in _LazyModule._get_module(self, module_name)
2072 try:
-> 2073 return importlib.import_module("." + module_name, self.name)
2074 except Exception as e:

File /usr/local/lib/python3.10/importlib/init.py:126, in import_module(name, package)
125 level += 1
--> 126 return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)

File :1050, in _gcd_import(name, package, level)

File :1027, in find_and_load(name, import)

File :992, in find_and_load_unlocked(name, import)

File :241, in _call_with_frames_removed(f, *args, **kwds)

File :1050, in _gcd_import(name, package, level)

File :1027, in find_and_load(name, import)

File :1004, in find_and_load_unlocked(name, import)

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'transformers.models.ipynb_checkpoints'

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

ModuleNotFoundError Traceback (most recent call last)
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2045, in _LazyModule.getattr(self, name)
2044 try:
-> 2045 module = self._get_module(self._class_to_module[name])
2046 value = getattr(module, name)

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2075, in _LazyModule._get_module(self, module_name)
2074 except Exception as e:
-> 2075 raise e

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2073, in _LazyModule._get_module(self, module_name)
2072 try:
-> 2073 return importlib.import_module("." + module_name, self.name)
2074 except Exception as e:

File /usr/local/lib/python3.10/importlib/init.py:126, in import_module(name, package)
125 level += 1
--> 126 return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)

File :1050, in _gcd_import(name, package, level)

File :1027, in find_and_load(name, import)

File :1006, in find_and_load_unlocked(name, import)

File :688, in _load_unlocked(spec)

File :883, in exec_module(self, module)

File :241, in _call_with_frames_removed(f, *args, **kwds)

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/models/encoder_decoder/configuration_encoder_decoder.py:20
19 from ...utils import logging
---> 20 from ..auto import AutoConfig
23 logger = logging.get_logger(name)

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2048, in _LazyModule.getattr(self, name)
2047 except (ModuleNotFoundError, RuntimeError) as e:
-> 2048 raise ModuleNotFoundError(
2049 f"Could not import module '{name}'. Are this object's requirements defined correctly?"
2050 ) from e
2052 elif name in self._modules:

ModuleNotFoundError: Could not import module 'AutoConfig'. Are this object's requirements defined correctly?

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

ModuleNotFoundError Traceback (most recent call last)
File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2045, in _LazyModule.getattr(self, name)
2044 try:
-> 2045 module = self._get_module(self._class_to_module[name])
2046 value = getattr(module, name)

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2075, in _LazyModule._get_module(self, module_name)
2074 except Exception as e:
-> 2075 raise e

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2073, in _LazyModule._get_module(self, module_name)
2072 try:
-> 2073 return importlib.import_module("." + module_name, self.name)
2074 except Exception as e:

File /usr/local/lib/python3.10/importlib/init.py:126, in import_module(name, package)
125 level += 1
--> 126 return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)

File :1050, in _gcd_import(name, package, level)

File :1027, in find_and_load(name, import)

File :1006, in find_and_load_unlocked(name, import)

File :688, in _load_unlocked(spec)

File :883, in exec_module(self, module)

File :241, in _call_with_frames_removed(f, *args, **kwds)

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/models/auto/tokenization_auto.py:37
29 from ...utils import (
30 cached_file,
31 extract_commit_hash,
(...)
35 logging,
36 )
---> 37 from ..encoder_decoder import EncoderDecoderConfig
38 from .auto_factory import _LazyAutoMapping

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2048, in _LazyModule.getattr(self, name)
2047 except (ModuleNotFoundError, RuntimeError) as e:
-> 2048 raise ModuleNotFoundError(
2049 f"Could not import module '{name}'. Are this object's requirements defined correctly?"
2050 ) from e
2052 elif name in self._modules:

ModuleNotFoundError: Could not import module 'EncoderDecoderConfig'. Are this object's requirements defined correctly?

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

ModuleNotFoundError Traceback (most recent call last)
Cell In[1], line 1
----> 1 from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM

File ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/transformers/utils/import_utils.py:2048, in _LazyModule.getattr(self, name)
2046 value = getattr(module, name)
2047 except (ModuleNotFoundError, RuntimeError) as e:
-> 2048 raise ModuleNotFoundError(
2049 f"Could not import module '{name}'. Are this object's requirements defined correctly?"
2050 ) from e
2052 elif name in self._modules:
2053 try:

ModuleNotFoundError: Could not import module 'AutoTokenizer'. Are this object's requirements defined correctly?

Expected behavior

The same error arises even if transformers are upgraded to the latest version. Importing transformers by itself does not throw any errors.

[MengAiDev]

You can try to remove ipynb checkpoint:

# Find ipynb_checkpoints in site-packages
sudo find ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/ -name 'ipynb_checkpoints' -type d

# Remove all found checkpoints (CAUTION: Backup first)
sudo find ~/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/ -name 'ipynb_checkpoints' -type d -exec rm -rf {} +

[ArthurZucker]

Closing as this is not a bug in transformers

[SangbumChoi]

@MengAiDev might solve the issue when you have the subdirectory start with . then the import_util library in the transformers is not able to work properly.

#10874