# Create encoder
encoder = keras.Model(inputs, [z_mean, z_log_sigma, z], name='encoder')

# Create decoder
latent_inputs = keras.Input(shape=(latent_dim,), name='z_sampling')
x = layers.Dense(intermediate_dim, activation='relu')(latent_inputs)
outputs = layers.Dense(original_dim, activation='sigmoid')(x)
decoder = keras.Model(latent_inputs, outputs, name='decoder')

# instantiate VAE model
outputs = decoder(encoder(inputs)[2])
vae = keras.Model(inputs, outputs, name='vae_mlp')