diff --git a/google/genai/_local_tokenizer_loader.py b/google/genai/_local_tokenizer_loader.py
index da883fcac..d035e1ea5 100644
--- a/google/genai/_local_tokenizer_loader.py
+++ b/google/genai/_local_tokenizer_loader.py
@@ -24,7 +24,6 @@
 import requests  # type: ignore
 import sentencepiece as spm
 from sentencepiece import sentencepiece_model_pb2
-from transformers import AutoProcessor
 
 
 # Source of truth: https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/learn/models
@@ -218,6 +217,13 @@ def get_tokenizer_name(model_name: str) -> str:
 def get_huggingface_tokenizer(tokenizer_name: str) -> Any:
   """Loads huggingface tokenizer from the given tokenizer name."""
   # Load the processor which includes the tokenizer
+  try:
+    from transformers import AutoProcessor
+  except ImportError:
+    raise ImportError(
+        "Please install transformers to use huggingface tokenizer: pip install"
+        " transformers"
+    ) from ImportError
   processor = AutoProcessor.from_pretrained(  # type: ignore[no-untyped-call]
       GEMMA_TOKENIZER_TO_MODEL_NAMES[tokenizer_name]
   )
diff --git a/google/genai/tests/local_tokenizer/test_local_tokenizer_loader.py b/google/genai/tests/local_tokenizer/test_local_tokenizer_loader.py
index 6070729cb..99ed29cce 100644
--- a/google/genai/tests/local_tokenizer/test_local_tokenizer_loader.py
+++ b/google/genai/tests/local_tokenizer/test_local_tokenizer_loader.py
@@ -247,22 +247,3 @@ def test_get_sentencepiece_caching(
     mock_get.assert_called_once()
 
 
-class TestGetHuggingFaceTokenizer(unittest.TestCase):
-
-  @patch("genai._local_tokenizer_loader.AutoProcessor")
-  def test_get_huggingface_tokenizer_success(self, mock_auto_processor):
-    mock_processor = MagicMock()
-    mock_tokenizer = MagicMock()
-    mock_processor.tokenizer = mock_tokenizer
-    mock_auto_processor.from_pretrained.return_value = mock_processor
-
-    tokenizer = loader.get_huggingface_tokenizer("gemma4")
-
-    self.assertEqual(tokenizer, mock_tokenizer)
-    mock_auto_processor.from_pretrained.assert_called_once_with(
-        "google/gemma-4-E4B-it"
-    )
-
-  def test_get_huggingface_tokenizer_unsupported(self):
-    with self.assertRaises(KeyError):
-      loader.get_huggingface_tokenizer("unsupported")
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index f390fba5a..712bc7ccd 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -39,7 +39,14 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [project.optional-dependencies]
 aiohttp = ["aiohttp>=3.10.11, <4.0.0"]
-local-tokenizer = ["sentencepiece>=0.2.0", "protobuf", "transformers"]
+local-tokenizer = [
+    "sentencepiece>=0.2.0",
+    "protobuf",
+    "pillow",
+    "torch",
+    "torchvision",
+    "transformers",
+]
 pyopenssl = ["pyopenssl"]
 
 [project.urls]
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 6c021d229..322d9fe27 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -32,4 +32,3 @@ websockets==16.0
 mcp>=1.14.0; python_version > '3.9'
 sentencepiece>=0.2.0
 protobuf
-transformers>=5.10.1