While 3eef526b41b7 and da3321fc5996 (see also #216) updated css-content-3 to say that the 'content' property accepts <image> values, no other parts of the spec appear to have been updated.
In particular, 2.2. URI is still totally in terms of <url>.
The spec needs to describe how <image> values work, in terms of the definitions provided in css-images, at the level of detail needed to implement interoperably.
This is apparently already implemented in some engines (e.g., Blink, IE, Edge), and there's a Mozilla bug on implementing in Gecko.