An NFT doesn’t dictate ownership, neither de jure nor de facto.

Sure, just like a property deed doesn’t dictate ownership. Just like money, deeds of any kind are only as valid as what we allow them to be, if our society were to use NFTs to track ownership of something then it would dictate ownership just as much as any other deed and would be enforceable by judges and police in the same manner.

In other words, NFT are a way to use Blockchain technology to obtain a non fungible token, whether that token means something depends on our societal agreements, just like any piece of paper.