diff --git a/src/transformers/generation/utils.py b/src/transformers/generation/utils.py
index f097d1e4a5f8..97aa95bdfe91 100644
--- a/src/transformers/generation/utils.py
+++ b/src/transformers/generation/utils.py
@@ -1563,7 +1563,7 @@ def generate(
                 return_dict_in_generate=generation_config.return_dict_in_generate,
                 synced_gpus=synced_gpus,
                 streamer=streamer,
-                low_memory=generation_config.low_memory,
+                sequential=generation_config.low_memory,
                 **model_kwargs,
             )
 
@@ -1827,7 +1827,7 @@ def contrastive_search(
         return_dict_in_generate: Optional[bool] = None,
         synced_gpus: bool = False,
         streamer: Optional["BaseStreamer"] = None,
-        low_memory: Optional[bool] = False,
+        sequential: Optional[bool] = None,
         **model_kwargs,
     ) -> Union[ContrastiveSearchOutput, torch.LongTensor]:
         r"""
@@ -1878,7 +1878,7 @@ def contrastive_search(
             streamer (`BaseStreamer`, *optional*):
                 Streamer object that will be used to stream the generated sequences. Generated tokens are passed
                 through `streamer.put(token_ids)` and the streamer is responsible for any further processing.
-            low_memory (`bool`, *optional*):
+            sequential (`bool`, *optional*):
                 Switches topk hidden state computation from parallel to sequential to reduce memory if True.
             model_kwargs:
                 Additional model specific keyword arguments will be forwarded to the `forward` function of the model.
@@ -1919,6 +1919,7 @@ def contrastive_search(
         stopping_criteria = stopping_criteria if stopping_criteria is not None else StoppingCriteriaList()
         pad_token_id = pad_token_id if pad_token_id is not None else self.generation_config.pad_token_id
         eos_token_id = eos_token_id if eos_token_id is not None else self.generation_config.eos_token_id
+        sequential = sequential if sequential is not None else self.generation_config.low_memory
         if isinstance(eos_token_id, int):
             eos_token_id = [eos_token_id]
         eos_token_id_tensor = torch.tensor(eos_token_id).to(input_ids.device) if eos_token_id is not None else None
@@ -1994,7 +1995,7 @@ def contrastive_search(
                     is_encoder_decoder=self.config.is_encoder_decoder,
                     standardize_cache_format=True,
                 )
-                if not low_memory:
+                if not sequential:
                     # Expands model inputs top_k times, for batched forward passes (akin to beam search).
                     _, model_kwargs = self._expand_inputs_for_generation(
                         expand_size=top_k, is_encoder_decoder=self.config.is_encoder_decoder, **model_kwargs
@@ -2047,14 +2048,14 @@ def contrastive_search(
                 items = []
                 # item is either the key or the value matrix
                 for item in layer:
-                    if low_memory:
+                    if sequential:
                         items.append(item.repeat_interleave(1, dim=0))
                     else:
                         items.append(item.repeat_interleave(top_k, dim=0))
                 new_key_values.append(items)
             model_kwargs["past_key_values"] = new_key_values
 
-            if low_memory:
+            if sequential:
                 all_outputs = {key: [] for key in outputs}  # defined in first loop iteration
                 all_last_hstates, all_hstates, all_logits = [], [], []
                 for i in range(top_k):
@@ -2137,7 +2138,7 @@ def contrastive_search(
                 next_decoder_hidden_states += (layer,)
 
             # generate past_key_values cache of only the selected token
-            if low_memory:
+            if sequential:
                 next_model_input = self.prepare_inputs_for_generation(
                     top_k_ids[:, selected_idx].view(-1, 1), **model_kwargs
                 )