How to prevent resolving particular paths as modules in Vue CLI? - vue.js

Question

I am updating #vue/cli-service from 4.5.15 to 5.0.6 in my project and it leads to errors when bundling:
Module not found: Error: Can't resolve '/assets/img/my-image.png' in 'C:\some-path-here\folder-name'
The image is defined in MyComponent.vue as follows:
<style>
.my-component {
background: url(/assets/img/my-image.png);
}
</style>
These are also some of my dependencies:
"dependencies": {
"vue": "^2.7.0"
},
"devDependencies": {
"#vue/cli-service": "^5.0.6",
"copy-webpack-plugin": "^11.0.0",
"sass": "^1.53.0",
"sass-loader": "^13.0.2",
"vue-svg-loader": "^0.16.0"
}
This is my understanding of what happens:
Webpack 5 is configured in Vue CLI 5.0.6 to find my-image.png somewhere in my project. This file doesn't exist in my project and Webpack will never find it.
Webpack 4 is not configured in Vue CLI 4.5.15 to find any assets in my project and it keeps paths as is.
Basically, I don't want Webpack to search for any assets (i.e. images and fonts) in my project, I want it to keep paths as is. A browser will find my assets based on the paths I defined myself.
Is there a way to prevent resolving particular paths in Webpack / Vue CLI? For example, if they start with "/assets" or end with particular file extensions?
I tried something like this but it does not help:
configureWebpack: {
plugins: [
new webpack.IgnorePlugin({
resourceRegExp: /^\.(png|woff)$/
})
]
}