diff --git a/MaxText/requirements_with_jax_ss.txt b/MaxText/requirements_with_jax_ss.txt
index f5afb5684..345039cfc 100644
--- a/MaxText/requirements_with_jax_ss.txt
+++ b/MaxText/requirements_with_jax_ss.txt
@@ -8,10 +8,9 @@ pyink
 pre-commit
 pytype
 sentencepiece==0.1.97
-tensorflow-text>=2.13.0
 tensorflow-datasets
 tiktoken
 transformers
 mlperf-logging@git+https://github.com/mlperf/logging.git
 google-jetstream
-jsonlines
\ No newline at end of file
+jsonlines
diff --git a/MaxText/tokenizer.py b/MaxText/tokenizer.py
index e6f389569..e93d0fa52 100644
--- a/MaxText/tokenizer.py
+++ b/MaxText/tokenizer.py
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
 from typing import Dict, Iterable, Union, Literal, Sequence, Collection, List
 from pathlib import Path
 import tensorflow as tf
-import tensorflow_text as tftxt
+import sentencepiece as sp
 import max_logging
 import tiktoken
 from tiktoken.load import load_tiktoken_bpe
@@ -199,12 +199,17 @@ def __init__(self, model_path: str, add_bos: bool, add_eos: bool):
     max_logging.log(f"Tokenizer path: {model_path}")
     with tf.io.gfile.GFile(model_path, "rb") as model_fp:
       sp_model = model_fp.read()
-    self.sp_tokenizer = tftxt.SentencepieceTokenizer(model=sp_model, add_bos=add_bos, add_eos=add_eos, reverse=False)
+    # this tokenizer is ONLY compatible with previous tftxt sp tokenizer if reverse=False
+    self.sp_tokenizer = sp.SentencePieceProcessor(model_proto=sp_model, add_bos=add_bos, add_eos=add_eos, reverse=False)
 
   def encode(self, s: str) -> List[int]:
+    if isinstance(s, tf.Tensor):
+      s = s.numpy()
     return self.sp_tokenizer.tokenize(s)
 
   def decode(self, t: Sequence[int]) -> str:
+    if isinstance(s, tf.Tensor):
+      s = s.numpy().tolist()
     return self.sp_tokenizer.detokenize(t)
 
 def build_tokenizer(tokenizer_path, add_bos, add_eos):
diff --git a/constraints_gpu.txt b/constraints_gpu.txt
index beab2a6d2..1485446a2 100644
--- a/constraints_gpu.txt
+++ b/constraints_gpu.txt
@@ -136,7 +136,6 @@ tensorflow-estimator==2.13.0
 tensorflow-hub==0.16.1
 tensorflow-io-gcs-filesystem==0.37.0
 tensorflow-metadata==1.15.0
-tensorflow-text==2.13.0
 tensorstore==0.1.63
 termcolor==2.4.0
 tf-keras==2.15.0
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 092cd3127..6b01be6f0 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -23,7 +23,6 @@ pyink
 pre-commit
 pytype
 sentencepiece==0.1.97
-tensorflow-text>=2.13.0
 tensorflow>=2.13.0
 tensorflow-datasets
 tensorboardx
diff --git a/requirements_with_jax_stable_stack.txt b/requirements_with_jax_stable_stack.txt
index f5afb5684..345039cfc 100644
--- a/requirements_with_jax_stable_stack.txt
+++ b/requirements_with_jax_stable_stack.txt
@@ -8,10 +8,9 @@ pyink
 pre-commit
 pytype
 sentencepiece==0.1.97
-tensorflow-text>=2.13.0
 tensorflow-datasets
 tiktoken
 transformers
 mlperf-logging@git+https://github.com/mlperf/logging.git
 google-jetstream
-jsonlines
\ No newline at end of file
+jsonlines