New Delhi, March 10 -- Nadeem Bari Husain, a frail, wrinkly man, sits leisurely at his home in Seelampur, Delhi, as he slowly types "PVC pipe sellers in Delhi IndiaMART" into his son's laptop. It's a simple query, the kind he has relied on for years, scrolling through listings, calling numbers and shortlisting suppliers the old way.

His 26-year-old son had recently urged him to try ChatGPT, the popular generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.

"Just type it like a Google search," he told his aging father. "You won't have to scroll for hours. You'll get three-four options; pick one," he said.

The results came back quickly. Neat, confident, helpful. Each with a direct link, not to IndiaMART, but straight to the seller's own websit...