A product team weighs a purchased tool against an internal build at the same table.Artificial intelligence made building cheap and buying easy. The trade-off now turns on who owns the upkeep, the seams between tools, the chat surfaces, and the data.For most of my career, product management owned buy versus build. A product manager wrote the case, finance checked the math, and procurement signed.Designers arrived after the decision was made, inherited whatever won, and spent years sanding its rough edges. Artificial intelligence changed the math on both sides at once.Build is cheaper now, but the yearly upkeep never shows up in the business case.Buy comes with legacy, and that legacy now includes someone else’s model, roadmap, and release calendar. And usually there’s a third option nobody names: replacing the system you already have.2025: The State of Generative AI in the...