AI Does HelpCan AI do it? How far?

Can AI write my salary negotiation email?

AI Does Help·

Yes — AI can write your salary negotiation email, and it will usually get a usable version on the first try. Give a general assistant the role, the offer, your target number and your reason for asking, and it returns a polite, well-structured email you can edit in a few minutes. What it can't do is choose that number for you or confirm it is realistic, which is why this task sits at "AI drafts, you finish."

Tools that work

Three general assistants cover this job well. For a single email, the free tier is usually enough; paid plans matter when you hit usage limits or want heavier file uploads and research. Plans and prices change, so check the current plan on the tool's site.

ChatGPT (OpenAI). The Free plan includes unlimited text chats, with limited messages with uploads, limited image creation, limited voice, limited deep research and limited memory. Plus costs $20 per month, billed monthly, and OpenAI notes there is no annual billing option for Plus. Go is the low-cost paid tier with higher limits than Free for image generation, file uploads and data analysis; OpenAI says it may adjust pricing over time, and the Go price itself was not shown on the pricing page when checked. If you want to attach the offer letter, Free users are limited to 3 file uploads per day, with a 512MB per file cap. To stop new chats being used to train OpenAI models, turn off "Improve the model for everyone" under Settings > Data controls; the chats still stay in your history, and temporary chats are not used to improve models (data controls).

Claude (Anthropic). Free is $0; Pro is $17 per month with the annual discount ($200 billed up front) or $20 if billed monthly; Max starts from $100 per month, with prices excluding tax and plans subject to change. Free already includes chat on web, desktop and mobile, web search, file creation, code execution, memory and Artifacts; Pro adds more usage, Projects, more models and research. Usage limits apply on every plan. Uploads go up to 500MB per file, up to 20 files per chat, PDFs up to 1000 pages; project files are limited to 30MB each.

Gemini (Google). The Gemini app is free at $0/month with a Google Account; Google AI Plus is $4.99/month and Google AI Pro is $19.99/month, which gets 4x higher usage access than Free plus Gemini in Gmail, Docs and more and 5 TB storage. Prices differ by country — the Australian page shows AUD.

All three publishers say plainly that outputs can be wrong. OpenAI says ChatGPT can produce incorrect or misleading outputs, including fabricated quotes or citations, and that its models have a knowledge cutoff. Anthropic says users should not rely on Claude as a singular source of truth and should scrutinise high-stakes advice. Google advises double-checking responses and not relying on them for professional advice. That warning bites hardest on the pay figures.

A prompt to paste

You are helping me write a salary negotiation email.

Context:
- I have been offered the role of [job title] at [company].
- The offer is [salary / hourly rate] of [amount] per [year / hour].
- I want to ask for [target amount].
- My reasons: [a few short points — market range I checked, scope of the role, competing offer].
- I'm emailing my [hiring manager / recruiter], and we have [spoken once / been interviewing for a few weeks].
- Tone: [warm and direct / formal].

Write:
1. A subject line.
2. A short email that thanks them for the offer, states the number I'm asking for,
   gives my reasons in one or two sentences, and asks for a reply by [date].
3. A closing line that keeps the conversation open if the answer is no.

Rules: do not invent pay data, market ranges or company facts. If you need a figure
I haven't given you, leave a [fill in] placeholder instead of guessing.

Two follow-ups worth running:

Make this shorter and more direct, and cut any sentence that reads like an ultimatum.

Draft my reply for if they say the budget is fixed — asking about [signing bonus /
earlier review date / title] instead, without accepting or refusing on the spot.

How far AI gets you

AI drafts, you finish. The wording is the easy part; the number inside it is the part that has consequences. None of these assistants has your contract, your award or the current pay range for your occupation unless you paste them in, and all three warn that they can be wrong and should not be treated as a single source of truth.

What you still do

  • Check the pay figure against an official source. In the US, the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook covers pay and job outlook for 300+ occupational profiles and updates job outlook and wage data annually; its wage estimates cover wages and salaries only and exclude nonproduction bonuses and employer costs for nonwage benefits, and BLS does not collect data on starting salaries. In the UK, the ONS reported median weekly earnings for full-time employees of £766.60 in April 2025. In Australia, Fair Work pay guides set out minimum pay rates for full-time, part-time and casual employees under each award, including allowances and common penalty rates, but don't apply where an enterprise agreement covers you; Jobs and Skills Australia occupation pages show median weekly earnings by occupation, though the ANZSCO-based pages will not be updated again and new OSCA-based profiles are being released.
  • Read the offer as a contract, not a number. Under Fair Work, an employment contract can be in writing or verbal, and it can't remove or provide for less than your minimum entitlements — check the minimum entitlements in your award or enterprise agreement even if you have a contract. Contracts made on or after 7 December 2022 also can't stop you sharing or not sharing your pay information: pay secrecy terms have no effect.
  • Decide the ask, the fallback and the deadline, then send it yourself from your own mailbox, under your own name.
  • Use an official source or a qualified person when it's about rights rather than wording. If you're unsure whether a term is lawful where you live, go to the regulator's own guidance (the Fair Work Ombudsman in Australia) or a qualified employment lawyer, union representative or licensed adviser. Google's guidance for Gemini says not to rely on assistant responses for professional advice, and that applies to every tool here.

Common questions

Can I paste my whole offer letter into the chat?

You can, within each tool's upload limits — 512MB per file in ChatGPT, 500MB per file in Claude — but think about what you're handing over first. In ChatGPT you can turn off "Improve the model for everyone" under Settings > Data controls so new conversations aren't used to train OpenAI models, though the chats still remain in your history; temporary chats aren't used to improve models.

Do I need a paid plan to write one email?

Usually not. Free tiers include chat, and Claude's free plan includes memory and Artifacts; paid tiers raise usage limits and add features like Projects and research. Plans and prices change, so check the current plan on the tool's site.

Will AI know the current pay range for my job?

Treat any figure it gives as a starting point, not an answer. OpenAI notes its models have a knowledge cutoff and don't include later events unless tools such as search are used, and BLS doesn't collect starting salary data at all. Look the range up on the official source for your country before you put a number in the email.

Sources