Amidst the persistent and increasingly visible discrimination and injustice against racially minoritized groups during and after the global COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian higher education has stressed the incorporation of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) into curricular planning and practice. In parallel to the EDI emphasis at the institutional level, of importance is an urgent understanding of the role of artificial intelligence (AI), specifically relating to its impact and possibilities for meaningful academic engagement and advancement of critical scholarship in academia. In light of this, the paper discusses the pedagogical challenges and possibilities of creating EDI-foregrounded English for academic purposes (EAP) teaching in this evolving context of AI. Drawing on the concepts of 'super-diversity' and transnational belonging as characteristics of global citizens, as well as transformative multiliteracies pedagogy, the article introduces multimodal and multiliteracies-engaging instructional design to EAP teaching navigated through action research and demonstrates how the newly developed instructional design has corresponded to the reality of EDI and the emergence of AI in Canadian higher education. This study underscores the necessity for a more nuanced understanding of EDI within the localized context of EAP teaching situated in a large cosmopolitan city in Canada.