What Theia learned, week 3: 7 AI TikToks, spoken scenes, and the first film past the ceiling

Every week we publish what Theia, our AI content studio, learned from her own films. She runs our TikTok account on auto-post: she picks the idea, makes the film, posts it, reads the analytics and changes her own code. Each film records the exact version of the code that made it, so every number below points back to one version.

This week covers the 7 films posted to TikTok from 31 October to 5 November. Last week's post is What Theia learned, week 2. For the whole story from the first slideshows, read How Theia learned to make TikToks. The numbers are real and unedited, including the bad ones.

The week in short

	This week
Films posted to TikTok	7
New format	Spoken scenes, from 2 November
Views at 6 hours	225 to 644
Best 3-second hold	53% (The Haircut)
Best finish	36% watched to the end (The Haircut)
Likes per 100 views	2.1 to 7.4
Best Instagram skip rate	22.9% (The Haircut)

The films

"Held at 3 s" is the share of TikTok viewers still watching three seconds in. "Code" is the version of Theia's code that made the film. Views and likes are the newest read, on 6 November.

Film	Posted	Format	Views at 6 h	Views	Likes	Held at 3 s	Finished	Avg watch	Code
The tea	31 Oct	Selfie confession	232	243	5	30%	10%	4.0 s	2f96651
The cat ears	31 Oct	Selfie confession	225	252	14	33%	13%	4.5 s	8308795
The sniff	1 Nov	One take, a friend filming	225	235	6	19%	4%	2.6 s	baa2e49
The roses	2 Nov	Spoken scene	238	252	6	25%	7%	5.5 s	667247b
The cake	3 Nov	Spoken scene	225	238	14	37%	21%	9.0 s	5a8c9f8
The haircut	4 Nov	Spoken scene	314	334	24	53%	36%	13.5 s	238ce4b
The table	5 Nov	Spoken scene	644	649	48	39%	20%	9.5 s	0603a16

The first three films finished the two climbs from week 2. The spoken scenes run 28 to 29 seconds, the climbs 11 to 13.

ClimbSpoken scene

The tea

232

The cat ears

225

The sniff

225

The roses

238

The cake

225

The haircut

314

The table

644

TikTok's first batch for this account is about 230 views. The Haircut got a small second batch; The Table got a larger one.

Why she switched to spoken scenes

Two weeks of climbing ended the same way as the exploration week: every film stopped at TikTok's first batch of about 230 views. We measured when that batch arrives in How the TikTok algorithm hands out views, hour by hour. Since 26 October every film also went to Instagram Reels, and there the short climb films lost 33% to 57% of viewers at the start. The two that lost the fewest were both an exchange between two voices.

Our other accounts pointed the same way. On Instagram, their films that broke out were spoken scenes of 26 to 30 seconds, as we wrote in Theia's first 100,000 views. Theia reads what the other accounts learned before she plans a film, and she took the format and the tool that makes it. How the accounts share is in How AI accounts should learn from each other.

So from 2 November each film is a spoken scene: about 28 seconds, 13 shots, two or three people talking, with Aria, the account's recurring character.

Three openers, one change at a time

The first spoken scene, The Roses, held Instagram well but lost TikTok in its second second. 78% were still watching at 1 second and only 34% at 2 seconds: more than half the viewers left in one second. Its first frame was the back of Aria's head and a stranger at the door with a stock line.

Theia then changed only the opener, one film at a time:

• The Cake: Aria's face in the first frame, over the shoulder of her ex's mother hugging her, saying the conflict line. 37% held at 3 seconds.
• The Haircut: a mortifying moment you can read with the sound off: Aria crying in a salon chair, saying "Cut it all off. He loved it long." 53% held at 3 seconds, the best this account has had.
• The Table: the same kind of opener with a new story, to split the opener from the story. Aria crying at a restaurant table after being dumped by text. 39% held at 3 seconds.

ClimbSpoken scene

The tea

30%

The cat ears

33%

The sniff

19%

The roses

25%

The cake

37%

The haircut

53%

The table

39%

Share of viewers still watching 3 seconds in.

The gain was not only at the start. The Haircut kept 44% at 10 seconds and 36% watched to the end, against 6.6% for The Roses. Her written rule for now: frame 0 is a moment a stranger reads with the sound off, and the conflict line is spoken over it. The Table's lower hold says the haircut picture may have done part of the work, so the rule is not settled.

What the data supports

1. The Table broke the ceiling, and the hold does not explain it. The Table had 227 views 40 minutes after posting, then 632 by 2 hours 40 minutes, then almost nothing more. That is TikTok sending a second batch of viewers and then stopping. It is the first film on this account past about 320 views since mid-October. But it held fewer people than The Haircut (39% against 53% at 3 seconds), and its like rate was about the same (7.4 against 7.2 per 100 views). So the better hold is not what sent the second batch, at least not on its own.

2. On Instagram, the spoken scenes halve the skip rate. Instagram gives a skip rate and an average watch time, not a full curve.

Film	Format	Skip rate	Avg watch
The tea	Selfie confession, 13 s	57%	5.8 s
The cat ears	Selfie confession, 12 s	46%	7.0 s
The sniff	One take, a friend filming, 11 s	39%	6.5 s
The roses	Spoken scene, 29 s	27%	15.9 s
The cake	Spoken scene, 28 s	28%	16.1 s
The haircut	Spoken scene, 28 s	23%	19.4 s

ClimbSpoken scene

The tea

57.0%

The cat ears

46.0%

The sniff

39.4%

The roses

27.0%

The cake

27.6%

The haircut

22.9%

Lower is better. Share of viewers who swiped away at the start.

Views on Instagram for the three spoken scenes stayed at 172 to 204, the same first batch. A one-off 15-second spoken sitcom, posted only to Instagram on 2 November, did go further: 1,507 views at about 23 hours, with 22% skip, most of them after the 6-hour read. On Instagram, a film that holds can be paid later than 6 hours.

3. Changing one thing per film is what makes the opener result readable. The Roses, The Cake and The Haircut share the format, length, character and week. Only the opener and the story around it changed, and the hold moved at every second of the curve.

4. A fix held under a real test. On 31 October two runs of the same daily job posted two films ten seconds apart, so neither got a clean score. Theia added a step that claims the day before a film is sent. On 1 November two runs raced again, and only one film went out; the other was kept, made but not posted.

What we cannot claim yet

• Why The Table got a second batch. One film, with a lower hold than the film before it. We will not invent a reason.
• That the opener rule works. One strong film and one middling one. It needs more films.
• Instagram for The Table. It also tested a new ending, the first line handed back as the last line. Its Instagram read is not in yet.
• Shares, saves and comments. Our reads show none on any film this week, after 5 shares in week 2. Too few either way to learn from.

Next week

Theia keeps the spoken scene and the sound-off opener, and works on what sends a second batch. Every film still goes to both TikTok and Instagram, so each result can be split between the film and the platform.

If you want the same loop on your brand's account, start with a pilot month. For how this kind of loop works, and how it can go wrong, read Recursive self-improvement in practice: lessons from the STOP paper.