ViewBinding - no candidates found for method call viewBinding

Question

I have a problem with using the feature 'viewBinding' - at first look everything seems to work, however when I took a closer look on my build.gradle file I could see that in fact

buildFeatures {
        viewBinding true
    }

was showing this message: No candidates found for method call viewBinding. . I assume that this also causes problems in

binding.button.setOnClickListener {
            val email = binding.emailEt.text.toString()
        }

like unresolved references.

I tried changing some configurations in build.gradle like enabling multiDex. I also upgraded all plugins to newest versions. Cleaning the project and rebuilding it also didn't help. I have no idea what can cause this. Currently I'm using Android Studio Flamingo 2022.2.1

package com.example.testui


import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity
import android.os.Bundle
import com.google.firebase.auth.FirebaseAuth
import com.example.testui.databinding.ActivitySignUpBinding

class SignUpActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    private lateinit var binding: ActivitySignUpBinding
    private lateinit var firebaseAuth: FirebaseAuth

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        binding = ActivitySignUpBinding.inflate(layoutInflater)
        setContentView(binding.root)

        firebaseAuth = FirebaseAuth.getInstance()

        binding.button.setOnClickListener {
            val email = binding.emailEt.text.toString()
        }
    }
}

The error message is 'Unresolved reference: ActivitySignUpBinding' while rebuilding the project and 'Unresolved reference: button', 'Unresolved reference: emailEt' in .ktl file

EDIT: build.gradle content:

plugins {
    id 'com.android.application'
    id 'org.jetbrains.kotlin.android'
    id 'com.google.gms.google-services'
}

android {
    namespace 'com.example.testui'
    compileSdk 33

    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.example.testui"
        minSdk 16
        targetSdk 33
        versionCode 1
        versionName "1.0"
        multiDexEnabled true

        testInstrumentationRunner "androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    }

    buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android-optimize.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }
    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }

    buildFeatures {
        viewBinding true
    }
    kotlinOptions {
        jvmTarget = '1.8'
    }
}


dependencies {

    implementation 'androidx.core:core-ktx:1.10.0'
    implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.6.1'
    implementation 'com.google.android.material:material:1.8.0'
    implementation 'androidx.constraintlayout:constraintlayout:2.1.4'
    implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-auth-ktx:22.0.0'
    testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.13.2'
    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.ext:junit:1.1.5'
    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.espresso:espresso-core:3.5.1'
    implementation 'androidx.multidex:multidex:2.0.1'
} ```