diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index c17e398a02..8d7b6d86ea 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 - A base class for dataset validation plugins (<https://github.com/openvinotoolkit/datumaro/pull/299>)
 
 ### Changed
--
+- Tensorflow AVX check is made optional in API and is disabled by default (<https://github.com/openvinotoolkit/datumaro/pull/305>)
 
 ### Deprecated
 -
diff --git a/datumaro/util/tf_util.py b/datumaro/util/tf_util.py
index 9eda97bab9..a185704e52 100644
--- a/datumaro/util/tf_util.py
+++ b/datumaro/util/tf_util.py
@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
 
 
+enable_tf_check = False
+
 def check_import():
     # Workaround for checking import availability:
     # Official TF builds include AVX instructions. Once we try to import,
@@ -32,7 +34,7 @@ def check_import():
 
         raise ImportError(message)
 
-def import_tf(check=True):
+def import_tf(check=None):
     import sys
 
     not_found = object()
@@ -46,6 +48,9 @@ def import_tf(check=True):
     import os
     os.environ['TF_CPP_MIN_LOG_LEVEL'] = '2'
 
+    if check is None:
+        check = enable_tf_check
+
     if check:
         try:
             check_import()