How to solve "AttributeError: module 'google.protobuf.descriptor' has no attribute '_internal_create_key"?

Question

I encountered it while executing from object_detection.utils import label_map_util in jupyter notebook. It is actually the tensorflow object detection tutorial notebook(it comes with the tensorflow object detection api) The complete error log:

AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-7-7035655b948a> in <module>
      1 from object_detection.utils import ops as utils_ops
----> 2 from object_detection.utils import label_map_util
      3 from object_detection.utils import visualization_utils as vis_util

~\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\object_detection\utils\label_map_util.py in <module>
     25 import tensorflow as tf
     26 from google.protobuf import text_format
---> 27 from object_detection.protos import string_int_label_map_pb2
     28 
     29 

~\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\object_detection\protos\string_int_label_map_pb2.py in <module>
     19   syntax='proto2',
     20   serialized_options=None,
---> 21   create_key=_descriptor._internal_create_key,
     22   serialized_pb=b'\n2object_detection/protos/string_int_label_map.proto\x12\x17object_detection.protos\"\xc0\x01\n\x15StringIntLabelMapItem\x12\x0c\n\x04name\x18\x01 \x01(\t\x12\n\n\x02id\x18\x02 \x01(\x05\x12\x14\n\x0c\x64isplay_name\x18\x03 \x01(\t\x12M\n\tkeypoints\x18\x04 \x03(\x0b\x32:.object_detection.protos.StringIntLabelMapItem.KeypointMap\x1a(\n\x0bKeypointMap\x12\n\n\x02id\x18\x01 \x01(\x05\x12\r\n\x05label\x18\x02 \x01(\t\"Q\n\x11StringIntLabelMap\x12<\n\x04item\x18\x01 \x03(\x0b\x32..object_detection.protos.StringIntLabelMapItem'
     23 )

AttributeError: module 'google.protobuf.descriptor' has no attribute '_internal_create_key'

Answer 1

This is a solution which worked for me I'm not sure if it'll work for others.

The protoc verion I got through pip show protobuf and protoc --version were different. The version in pip was a bit outdated after I upgraded the pip version the problem was solved.

In order to upgrade it use pip install --upgrade protobuf