Solved Answer provided here: https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/1hwszn9/looking_for_help_for_hilt_dependency_injection/

Kotlin 2.1 requires ksp2 which is only supported by hilt starting at update 2.54

Step 1: change hilt from 2.53.1 to 2.54

Step 2: add ksp to root level plugin declaration

Step 3: in module level build.gradle, remove "implementation(libs.hilt.compiler)"