diff --git a/trax/tf_numpy/examples/mnist/train_test.py b/trax/tf_numpy/examples/mnist/train_test.py
index 8b51da7c1..77122c3b0 100644
--- a/trax/tf_numpy/examples/mnist/train_test.py
+++ b/trax/tf_numpy/examples/mnist/train_test.py
@@ -46,8 +46,8 @@ def testRuns(self):
 def fake_mnist_data():
 
   def gen_examples(num_examples):
-    x = np.array(
-        np.random.randn(num_examples, 784), copy=False, dtype=np.float32)
+    x = np.asarray(
+        np.random.randn(num_examples, 784), dtype=np.float32)
     y = np.zeros((num_examples, 10), dtype=np.float32)
     y[:][0] = 1.
     return (x, y)