In older versions of Android Studio there was an option for "Empty Activity" (as well as "No Activity" and other Activity options). These activities used the Views XML layout format. Now in Android Studio, all the older activities are called Views Activity as they use the older Views format. There is now a choice for "Empty Activity" which uses the Compose layout, which is declarative (programmatic) layout, not XML. The old "Empty Activity" is now called "Empty Views Activity".

The views are for backward compatibility. For new projects it is suggested you use the new Compose declarative layout which is much easier to handle in code.