system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What is a memory leak?

I've always wondered what a memory leak is - often when software is updated I see fixes on memory leaks.
gpt
Think of memory like books in a library.  The librarian lends them out, and expects patrons to return them in a timely fashion.

If patrons don't return them, then those posts are unavailable to everyone else.  And if patrons get in the habit of borrowing lots of books and never returning them, the library will soon run out.

That's pretty much what memory leak is, a program asks the operating system for memory, then forgets to let the OS know when it is finished with it.  If that request for memory is inside a loop that runs several times each second, the program can wind up using much more memory than it requires, the OS will eventually run out of memory to give.