Adobe's new Premiere Pro app will have you purring into your iPhone

If you hear content creators humming, purring, hissing or tweeting into their iPhones in your local hipster cafe this week, don't worry, they're just trying out Adobe's new Premiere Pro for iPhone.

I wasn't expecting to be massively interested in the new app. Considering that Davinci Resolve Studio is so powerful and such good value, I've never seen the need to look much at Adobe's offering, even if it does top our buying guide for the best video editing software. And editing video on a tiny phone display just sounds like a nightmare. But I'm a sucker for a novelty feature, and voice-controlled AI-generated sound effects look like a hilarious tool to play around with.

Adobe Premiere Pro for iPhone is free to download, and the free version gets you all of the general editing tools, which include a multi-track timeline, 4K HDR editing, animated captions, speed and motion effects, background removal and Enhanced Speech to reduce background noise on voiceovers.

But where Adobe really hopes to stand out above many existing mobile video editing apps is in its application of generative AI. Cue Generative Sound Effects.

Rather than generating effects using text prompts alone, Firefly's AI sound effects model can now take voice input into the mix. In the video above, the YouTuber Cleo Abram demonstrates this by purring into her iPhone to create a 'monster purring' sound effect before going on to perform the sound of a spring and a sheet of metal blowing in the wind.

In the demo I saw yesterday, Adobe designer Dave Werner added the sound of a bell to a phone-recorded video in which the sound of a bell ringing in a scene wasn't picked up by the phone's microphone.

You still use a text prompt to describe the effect you want, and the demos I've seen so far have sometimes resulted in very unrealistic effects, but it's going to be interesting to see how much 'performing' the sound changes the output compared to using text prompts alone, and whether it's possible get a more realistic result with a more accurate performance. Basically, it's going to be a lot of fun to try out, and to explore whether it's a gimmick or a real advance for mobile workflows.

Other AI-driven tools in Premiere Pro for iPhone include the ability to generate stickers, expand backgrounds and generate video from images. The app also includes access to Adobe's stock libraries.

I think two of the most useful features over other apps for content creators are going to be the quick access to royalty free music tracks, and, synchonisation with Premiere Pro on desktop.

The latter should make it easy to start a project on iPhone as soon as you've recorded footage out in the field and continue on a more comfortable desktop environment or vice versa, starting on desktop and using the iPhone app to make final adjustments if you need to change things before hand off or publication. I'll just have to see how well my clumsy fingers get on with manipulating a timeline on a phone screen.

Adobe Premiere Pro for iPhone is available now on the Apple App Store. Download is free, but you'll need a subscription if you want Adobe's cloud storage or generative credits for the AI (see prices below). An Android version of the app is in development.

Also see our Premiere Pro review.