Laptop audio randomly switches between speakers and headphones jack

The audio on my Dell Inspiron laptop (running Windows 10) is acting up. One minute it's sounding fine, then suddenly it goes away, then comes back a few seconds later. I've tried listening to audio using wired headphones and discovered that when the audio stops on the built-in speakers, it's channeled to the headphones jack. But even with headphones jacked in, audio flips from them to the speakers and back, randomly. When I use bluetooth headphones the problem goes away - sound is channeled to the wireless headphones consistently over time. What is causing this odd behavior and how can I fix i

Question by urig on Super User, licensed CC BY-SA. We show a short excerpt and link to the original thread as credit.