Text generation with GPT-2 in Ruby

Introduction

Many people think that accessing AI from languages other than Python is too difficult. Recently, however, a large number of pre-trained models have been published, making it easy to run AI inference from a variety of platforms and programming languages. Here, I would like to run the ONNX runtime and try out the GPT-2 model that generates English sentences from the Ruby language. Inference is easy with ONNX Runtime.

Preparation and installation

Install the following three gems.

• onnxruntime - Ruby bindings for ONNX Runtime.
• tokenizers - Ruby bindings for Tokenizers provided by Hugging Face.
• numo-narray - Ruby matrix library. Equivalent to NumPy.

gem install onnxruntime
gem install tokenizers
gem install numo-narray

The onnxruntime gem already contains binary files for each platform, so you don't need to install the ONNX runtime yourself. Just install the gem and it should work.

The tokenizers gem is written in Rust, so installation requires Rust. If Rust isn't available, blingfire can be used instead.

Also note that the singular "tokenizer" is a different gem.

Get the ONNX model

Here we use the GPT-2 model distributed by the ONNX official. Download GPT-2-LM-HEAD from the link.

If you try to download it by right-clicking on the screen above, it will fail because the link destination is html. Click the link once and download the model from the download button on the top right of the next page.

Put gpt2-lm-head-10.onnx in the same directory as the script. You can browse the content of ONNX models using NETRON.

Write Code

Are you ready? Now let's write some Ruby code.

require "tokenizers"
require "onnxruntime"
require "numo/narray"

s = "Why do cats want to ride on the keyboard?"

# Prepare a tokenizer.
tokenizer = Tokenizers.from_pretrained("gpt2")

# Load the model.
model = OnnxRuntime::Model.new("gpt2-lm-head-10.onnx")

# Convert string to matrix.
ids = tokenizer.encode(s).ids

# Get 10 words.
10.times do
  o = model.predict({ input1: [[ids]] })
  o = Numo::DFloat.cast(o["output1"][0])
  ids << o[true, -1, true].argmax
end

# Print the result. Array to string.
puts tokenizer.decode(ids)

The following code will be unfamiliar to many Ruby users. It uses numo-narray, a library similar to NumPy. If you want to know more about what you can do with numo-narray, see here.

  o = Numo::DFloat.cast(o["output1"][0])
  ids << o[true, -1, true].argmax

Actually, I don't understand exactly what matrix operations do. I'm just translating the NumPy code to numo-narray. But on the other hand, you don't have to be familiar with AI or mathematics to use publicly available AI models. It's like being able to drive a car without being able to repair it yourself.

Run

ruby gpt2.rb

Why do cats want to ride on the keyboard?

The answer is that they do.

This time, we did not call the API on the web, but actually executed Deep Learning on your machine. I hope you found it easier to call Deep Learning models from Ruby than you thought.

Enjoy your Ruby computing. Have a nice day!

---

Select words probabilistically

The implementation above selects the most probable word. If you want the word selection to be more probabilistic, you can do something like this.

def softmax(y)
  Numo::NMath.exp(y) / Numo::NMath.exp(y).sum(1, keepdims: true)
end

  outputs = @model.predict({ input1: [[ids]] })
  logits = Numo::DFloat.cast(outputs['output1'][0])
  logits = logits[true, -1, true]

  log_probs = softmax(logits)
  cum_probs = log_probs.cumsum(1)
  r = rand(0..cum_probs[-1]) # 0..1
  (cum_probs < r).count

How to Add a GUI

Comments

[Ahmed Nadar]

Thank you!

"Many people think that accessing AI from languages other than Python is too difficult. Recently, however, a large number of pre-trained models have been published, making it easy to run AI inference from a variety of platforms and programming languages."

Your statment is a spot on. It has been easy to find AI projects with Ruby, but I noticed few brave devs are writing and expermenting AI with Ruby and Rails.
In the last week or so, i'm re-writing examples from Python to Ruby and playing with AI in Ruby and it is fun. One of the developer that I look up for his work is Andrew Kane.
Awesome works.
Thanks again, and do more AI in Ruby.

[Andy Maleh]

Thank you for this article. I have some experience with OpenAI GPT-2 in Python, but I have never used it in Ruby before. I appreciate learning about how to leverage OpenAI GPT-2 from Ruby.

Here is a direct link to the GPT2 Notepad GUI built with Glimmer DSL for LibUI:
github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-...

Here is a direct link to the GPT2 Notepad GUI code:
github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-...