diff --git a/examples/llava/llava-utils.h b/examples/llava/llava-utils.h
index 79e237c86..4e71351dd 100644
--- a/examples/llava/llava-utils.h
+++ b/examples/llava/llava-utils.h
@@ -49,9 +49,9 @@ inline bool eval_id(struct llama_context * ctx_llama, int id, int * n_past) {
     return eval_tokens(ctx_llama, tokens, 1, n_past);
 }
 
-inline bool eval_string(struct llama_context * ctx_llama, const char* str, int n_batch, int * n_past){
+inline bool eval_string(struct llama_context * ctx_llama, const char* str, int n_batch, int * n_past, bool add_bos){
     std::string              str2     = str;
-    std::vector<llama_token> embd_inp = ::llama_tokenize(ctx_llama, str2, true);
+    std::vector<llama_token> embd_inp = ::llama_tokenize(ctx_llama, str2, add_bos);
     eval_tokens(ctx_llama, embd_inp, n_batch, n_past);
     return true;
 }
diff --git a/examples/llava/llava.cpp b/examples/llava/llava.cpp
index 8384d9d78..b24cb2e6f 100644
--- a/examples/llava/llava.cpp
+++ b/examples/llava/llava.cpp
@@ -97,6 +97,7 @@ int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
     ctx_params.n_ctx           = params.n_ctx < 2048 ? 2048 : params.n_ctx; // we need a longer context size to process image embeddings
     ctx_params.n_threads       = params.n_threads;
     ctx_params.n_threads_batch = params.n_threads_batch == -1 ? params.n_threads : params.n_threads_batch;
+    ctx_params.seed            = params.seed;
 
     llama_context * ctx_llama = llama_new_context_with_model(model, ctx_params);
 
@@ -106,7 +107,8 @@ int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
     }
 
     // make sure that the correct mmproj was used, i.e., compare apples to apples
-    int n_llama_embd = llama_n_embd(llama_get_model(ctx_llama));
+    const int n_llama_embd = llama_n_embd(llama_get_model(ctx_llama));
+
     if (n_img_embd != n_llama_embd) {
         printf("%s: embedding dim of the multimodal projector (%d) is not equal to that of LLaMA (%d). Make sure that you use the correct mmproj file.\n", __func__, n_img_embd, n_llama_embd);
 
@@ -125,14 +127,14 @@ int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
 
     const int max_tgt_len = params.n_predict < 0 ? 256 : params.n_predict;
 
-    // GG: are we sure that the should be a trailing whitespace at the end of this string?
-    eval_string(ctx_llama, "A chat between a curious human and an artificial intelligence assistant.  The assistant gives helpful, detailed, and polite answers to the human's questions.\nUSER: ", params.n_batch, &n_past);
+    eval_string(ctx_llama, "A chat between a curious human and an artificial intelligence assistant.  The assistant gives helpful, detailed, and polite answers to the human's questions.\nUSER:", params.n_batch, &n_past, true);
     eval_image_embd(ctx_llama, image_embd, n_img_pos, params.n_batch, &n_past);
-    eval_string(ctx_llama, params.prompt.c_str(), params.n_batch, &n_past);
-    eval_string(ctx_llama, "\nASSISTANT:",        params.n_batch, &n_past);
+    eval_string(ctx_llama, (params.prompt + "\nASSISTANT:").c_str(), params.n_batch, &n_past, false);
 
     // generate the response
 
+    printf("\n");
+    printf("prompt: '%s'\n", params.prompt.c_str());
     printf("\n");
 
     for (int i = 0; i < max_tgt_len; i++) {