diff --git a/training/model/Containerfile b/training/model/Containerfile
index 776fdbb3..f6e317ae 100644
--- a/training/model/Containerfile
+++ b/training/model/Containerfile
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 FROM quay.io/centos-bootc/centos-bootc:stream9
 
-ARG MODEL_REPO=https://huggingface.co/ibm/granite-7b-base
-ARG MODEL_PATH=/usr/share/ai-model
+ARG MODEL_REPO=''
+ARG MODEL_PATH=''
 
-RUN dnf install -y git-lfs
-RUN mkdir -p "${MODEL_PATH}"
-RUN git clone --progress --verbose "${MODEL_REPO}" "${MODEL_PATH}"
+RUN dnf install -y python3-pip && python -m pip install huggingface_hub
+RUN mkdir -p "${MODEL_PATH}" \
+    && echo from huggingface_hub import snapshot_download\;snapshot_download\(repo_id=\'${MODEL_REPO}\', local_dir=\'${MODEL_PATH}\', local_dir_use_symlinks=False\) | python
diff --git a/training/model/Makefile b/training/model/Makefile
index c0b2d3b6..db8b9e01 100644
--- a/training/model/Makefile
+++ b/training/model/Makefile
@@ -8,8 +8,8 @@ IMAGE_TAG ?= latest
 CONTAINER_TOOL ?= podman
 CONTAINER_TOOL_EXTRA_ARGS ?=
 
-MODEL_REPO ?=
-MODEL_PATH ?= 
+MODEL_REPO ?= ibm/granite-7b-base
+MODEL_PATH ?= /usr/share/ai-model
 
 .PHONY: image
 image: