Pick a narrow job, then a model
Start with a user and an outcome, not a model. “An AI app for marketers” is not a product. “Turn one brief into five on-brand ad concepts they can edit and export” is closer.
Write a small evaluation set from real inputs. Score outputs on what the customer cares about: accuracy, format, edits required, latency, cost. Do this before you marry a provider. The leaderboard winner is often the wrong model for your job.
You almost never need to train anything. Hosted APIs are the default. Fine-tune only when the eval says a general model cannot hit quality, privacy, or cost.