Shifting Dynamics: How Generative AI as a Boundary Resource Reshapes Digital Platform Governance

Digital platforms are increasingly integrating Generative AI (GenAI) tools as a boundary resource to enhance the quantity and quality of content with the ultimate goal of improving platform viability. As GenAI tools hold unique characteristics compared to traditional boundary resources, platform owners need to adapt their governance mechanisms accordingly. To understand how platform governance evolves over time in response to this novel boundary resource, we draw on the distributed tuning framework and build on insights from an in-depth qualitative study of a digital content platform in the educational sector. We find that the platform owner deployed different logics of GenAI integration over time that were enacted through specific governance mechanisms. The shift in logics and respective governance mechanisms was triggered by a dialectic process of resistance and accommodation between platform actors. In this process, the GenAI-enabled boundary resource not only changed over time but also served as a means for the power dynamics between platform owner and complementors to be reshaped. Our study contributes to both the platform governance literature as well as recent debates around GenAI.