diff --git a/whisper/__init__.py b/whisper/__init__.py
index 379133b6a..8d33446aa 100644
--- a/whisper/__init__.py
+++ b/whisper/__init__.py
@@ -4,8 +4,11 @@
 import urllib
 import warnings
 from typing import List, Optional, Union
+from importlib.util import find_spec
 
 import torch
+if find_spec("intel_extension_for_pytorch") is not None:
+    import intel_extension_for_pytorch
 from tqdm import tqdm
 
 from .audio import load_audio, log_mel_spectrogram, pad_or_trim
@@ -122,7 +125,13 @@ def load_model(
     """
 
     if device is None:
-        device = "cuda" if torch.cuda.is_available() else "cpu"
+        if torch.cuda.is_available():
+            device = "cuda"
+        elif find_spec('torch.xpu') is not None and torch.xpu.is_available():
+            device = "xpu"
+        else:
+            device = "cpu"
+
     if download_root is None:
         default = os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), ".cache")
         download_root = os.path.join(os.getenv("XDG_CACHE_HOME", default), "whisper")
diff --git a/whisper/transcribe.py b/whisper/transcribe.py
index 6e43a22fa..74e8c5103 100644
--- a/whisper/transcribe.py
+++ b/whisper/transcribe.py
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 import os
 import warnings
 from typing import TYPE_CHECKING, Optional, Tuple, Union
+from importlib.util import find_spec
 
 import numpy as np
 import torch
@@ -110,6 +111,8 @@ def transcribe(
     if model.device == torch.device("cpu"):
         if torch.cuda.is_available():
             warnings.warn("Performing inference on CPU when CUDA is available")
+        if find_spec('torch.xpu') is not None and torch.xpu.is_available():
+            warnings.warn("Performing inference on CPU when XPU is available")
         if dtype == torch.float16:
             warnings.warn("FP16 is not supported on CPU; using FP32 instead")
             dtype = torch.float32
@@ -383,7 +386,7 @@ def cli():
     parser.add_argument("audio", nargs="+", type=str, help="audio file(s) to transcribe")
     parser.add_argument("--model", default="small", choices=available_models(), help="name of the Whisper model to use")
     parser.add_argument("--model_dir", type=str, default=None, help="the path to save model files; uses ~/.cache/whisper by default")
-    parser.add_argument("--device", default="cuda" if torch.cuda.is_available() else "cpu", help="device to use for PyTorch inference")
+    parser.add_argument("--device", default=None, help="device to use for PyTorch inference")
     parser.add_argument("--output_dir", "-o", type=str, default=".", help="directory to save the outputs")
     parser.add_argument("--output_format", "-f", type=str, default="all", choices=["txt", "vtt", "srt", "tsv", "json", "all"], help="format of the output file; if not specified, all available formats will be produced")
     parser.add_argument("--verbose", type=str2bool, default=True, help="whether to print out the progress and debug messages")