An image forming apparatus includes: a controller that controls the image forming apparatus; a memory that stores noise levels produced by a plurality of devices constituting the image forming apparatus during operation of the devices; and a microphone that accepts a speech instruction for the image forming apparatus. The controller accepts a job, detects a speech level from the speech accepted by the microphone, compares the detected speech level with a noise level that corresponds to the job to be executed in the image forming apparatus and that has been read from the memory, and controls, based on a result of the comparison, which one of a process of accepting the speech instruction and a process of executing the job in the image forming apparatus should be preferentially performed.