diff --git a/examples/image-to-text/run_pipeline.py b/examples/image-to-text/run_pipeline.py
index bc48eb2558..8a2906f89f 100644
--- a/examples/image-to-text/run_pipeline.py
+++ b/examples/image-to-text/run_pipeline.py
@@ -358,6 +358,7 @@ def main():
             model = AutoModelForVision2Seq.from_pretrained(args.model_name_or_path, torch_dtype=model_dtype)
         if model_type == "mllama":
             model.language_model = initialize_distributed_model(args, model.language_model, logger, model_dtype)
+            model.to("hpu")
         else:
             model = initialize_distributed_model(args, model, logger, model_dtype)
         generator = pipeline(