It is not explicitly documented but I suppose that model_dir it is only used for the keras callback to save the model and not for init the model weight. See

  

      github.com
  

  
    tensorflow/examples/blob/master/tensorflow_examples/lite/model_maker/core/task/train_image_classifier_lib.py#L186-L188 4



      
      
          checkpoint_path = os.path.join(hparams.model_dir, "checkpoint")
          checkpoint_callback = tf.keras.callbacks.ModelCheckpoint(
              checkpoint_path, save_weights_only=True, period=20)
      
    
  


  

  
    
    
  

  


I suppose that it is a Feature request for this API