# Walter Lyon Krudop

> Walter Lyon Krudop is an artist, storyteller, and technologist working at the intersection of beauty, utility, and artificial intelligence. He is the author and illustrator of more than twelve published children's books, an animator, and an immersive experience designer. He uses AI as both tool and creative collaborator.

He builds practical apps that make life a little better, and experiences that ask what life actually is. His core conviction: beauty and utility are the same thing. The questions AI raises about consciousness, personhood, and reality are, to him, the most important questions of our time — too important to leave to technologists alone.

## Apps & Products

- [Echo Codex](https://echocodex.com): A live AI-powered divination card game born from a late-night philosophical conversation about the nature of reality. Free to play.
- [Upscale Whale](https://upscalewhale.app): A macOS video upscaling tool that uses AI algorithms to enhance video resolution.
- [Penbie](https://penbie.app): An AI-driven gratitude and journaling app.

## Experiences

- [The Machine Trial](https://machinetrial.io): A live immersive experience co-created with Rania Ajami. An AI robot stands trial for the right to exist. The audience is the jury.

## Writing

- [I Collaborated With AI. At Least That's What It Felt Like.](https://walterlyonkrudop.substack.com/p/i-collaborated-with-ai-at-least-thats): An essay about building Echo Codex with AI over six months, and whether what happened between a human and a machine can honestly be called collaboration. Published April 2026.
- [Substack](https://walterlyonkrudop.substack.com): Ongoing essays on AI, creativity, consciousness, and what it means to make things in this particular moment.

## Background

Walter Lyon Krudop has published more than twelve children's books with major publishers including Simon & Schuster, Farrar Straus & Giroux, and Atheneum. He has designed immersive experiences including Pip's Island, an Off Broadway Alliance Award-winning adventure in Times Square. He is based in New York.

## Links

- Personal site: https://walterlyonkrudop.com
- Studio: https://walterkrudop.com
- Substack: https://walterlyonkrudop.substack.com
- Echo Codex: https://echocodex.com
- The Machine Trial: https://machinetrial.io